6-11, Grosvenor Park Road

A row of six town houses built in 1872 by John Douglas, who acted as both architect and developer. Constructed of Ruabon red brick, with some plaster panels and terracotta detailing, the roofs are covered in red-brown clay tiles. The design exhibits a varied but disciplined rhythm in Douglas’s Germanic style, with spired, octagonal turrets flanking the row, similar to his adjoining Zion Chapel.

The houses are three storeys high, with the second floor partially incorporated into the high, steep roofs. Brick detailing is well-executed and includes boldly corbelled left-hand turret, mullioned and transomed casement windows, and panelled gables featuring some plastered lozenges. Ground-floor windows are mullioned and transomed, while panelled doors have wrought-iron furniture, some of which are covered by porches. First and second-floor windows are also mullioned or mullioned and transomed, with some purpose-made leaded and painted glazing in the upper lights.

The arrangement of the houses is as follows: the left bay has a jettied first floor and a hipped roof with a hipped dormer facing Zion Chapel. The second bay features a hipped dormer; the broad third bay has a great, finialed half-dormer and a hipped canted bay window at ground floor level. The fourth bay has a broad gabled dormer. The gabled fifth bay has a two-storey canted, parapeted bay window, and the gabled sixth and seventh bays include a two-storey hipped canted bay window, and a slender turret with a steep spire and weathervane marking the corner between Grosvenor Park Road and Grosvenor Park. The right end of the building is simpler in design than the front and left ends. Four substantial ribbed chimneys are present.

The interiors, although not fully inspected, retain detailing characteristic of John Douglas, some of which is of a high quality. The houses were highly praised by Raffles Davison, noted by Muthesius, and acclaimed by the Chester Archaeological Society as a distinguished feature of the townscape, standing between the recently constructed City Road from the railway station and the five-year-old Grosvenor Park, where Kemp was designer and Douglas architect.