Richmond Place

Richmond Place comprises a pair of early 19th-century town houses, later used as offices. The building is constructed of Flemish bond brown brick with stucco dressings and a grey slate roof. The exterior presents a three-storey, four-window facade. An Ionic stone verandah fronts the building, featuring a pair of columns between each window bay and a single column at each end of the narrower entrance bay, all on a three-step stylobate. The ground floor is stuccoed with pilasters to the entrance bays; one door has six fielded panels, while the other has been altered to two fielded panels and two glazed panels above a simple overlight. Above, four recessed 12-pane sashes are present. The verandah entablature has a stone frieze, cornice and parapet adorned with panels of vase balusters. Four full-height 15-pane sashes sit beneath brick tympani; they have round-ended sills with slightly cambered gauged brick heads. A stone cornice with vase finials tops the facade, with a central ridge chimney. An added bay, on the left, lacks distinguishing features. The rear of the main block displays two recessed 16-pane ground-floor sashes, two 12-pane first-floor sashes and four 9-pane second-floor sashes, all with painted stone sills and gauged brick heads, plus a lead rainwater pipe and head. The rear has an altered wing of two low storeys with some horizontally-sliding sashes. The interior, altered after 1972, retains an original open-string dogleg staircase with shaped brackets, a turned newel, moulded cast-iron balusters and a swept rail. Other original features include panelled embrasures, door architraves, a few 19th-century doors, including a shaped pair in a Tudor-arched opening linking the main block and left wing, one or two early 19th-century fireplace surrounds, some plaster cornices, and a moulded plaster ceiling in a first-floor front room.