[35894] Wakefield : 56-62 Westgate

56-62 Westgate, Wakefield, West Yorkshire.

 

56-58 - NatWest Bank, late c19 - main building.

60-62 - early-mid C19.

All are Grade ll listed.

 

No 60.

Part of NatWest Bank in 2020.

Chemist TW Gissing (1829-1870) owned this shop from 1856 until his death. His eldest son, novelist George Gissing (1857-1903), was born in the family home to its rear.

 

The Victorian novelist George Gissing (1857-1903) was born on 22 November 1857 in Wakefield and lived as a boy in the house behind his father's chemist's shop in Thompson's Yard, just off Westgate.

 

George Gissing wrote 23 novels as well as two studies of Dickens, a travel book and numerous short stories. Among his best works are the semi-autobiographical The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft and New Grub Street. In the latter he writes about the problems of struggling authors and the trade of hack journalism.

 

Although after his father’s death Gissing never lived permanently in Wakefield, his recollections of his home town, its landscape and some of its citizens colour some of his short stories and novels (A Life's Morning, is set in a thinly disguised Wakefield).

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