Addycombe Cottages With Attached Walls And Outbuildings

A terrace of twelve houses built in 1873 by Norman Shaw for Lord Armstrong, originally listed as part of a larger group (Nos 1-22) and subsequently re-evaluated. The cottages were restored in 1978 by Spence & Price of Newcastle, with subsequent reduction in height of the rear walls.

The cottages are constructed of rubble stone with rock-faced and margined dressings. The porches and gables of the end houses are half-timbered, with pebbledash infill over brick. They have red clay tile roofs with ornamental terracotta ridges and finials, and purple slates on the rear outbuildings. The terrace is divided into flats, with the first-floor flats accessed via external staircases at the rear. The design is in the Domestic Revival style.

The front elevation steps up the slope, with two storeys except for the end houses, which are two storeys plus an attic. Each house has two bays. A central, timber-framed porch with a 9-pane fixed casement window and vertically-panelled door features an ogee-arched surround and a gablet with projecting bargeboards. The windows are 2-, 3- and 4-light, mullioned-and-transomed, with plain casements. First-floor windows in the intermediate houses are within gabled half dormers, while the end houses have broad, timber-framed attic gables, with upper parts projecting on moulded corbels, each containing a 3-light, small-paned casement window; plain bargeboards. Coped intermediate gables, end and ridge stacks with battered faces are also present.

The returns show broad gables with attic slits and pent roof projections. Intermediate houses incorporate projecting gabled wings with attached outhouses, displaying asymmetric pitched roofs. An east end house features a broad gable above a late 20th-century rear wing in a matching style. External stone stairs lead to balconies and the doors of the upper flat entrances within the wings. Attached yard walls have re-set arched coping.

These cottages were originally built as accommodation for retiring staff of the Armstrong household.