31-37, BROAD STREET

A bye-law terrace of four houses at 31-37 Broad Street, designed by the architect Edgar Wood in 1899. Built in common brick with red engineering brick dressings and slate roofs.

The terrace has a symmetrical plan comprising two inner houses flanked by two L-shaped outer houses. The outer houses have projecting gables to front and sides, while the rear elevation is flush with no outshots. The two outer houses have mirror-image plans, except that No. 31 contains two cellar rooms rather than one. The inner houses also have mirror-image plans to each other.

The two outer houses have doorways set into the narrow side walls of their side gables, each with a flat wooden porch roof supported by shaped wooden brackets and a decorative metal lamp bracket below No. 31. No. 31 has a replacement wooden door and No. 37 has a new uPVC door. Above each porch is a shallow segmental-arched overlight with an engineering brick head; that to No. 31 is blocked. Each projecting front gable contains a shallow, battered canted bay window with a steeply pitched roof covered in small slate tiles. Both windows now have uPVC frames. The two inner houses each have a shallow, battered canted bay window abutting the inner side walls of the front gables, with steeply pitched roofs of small slate tiles and original small-pane leaded lights.

In the centre of the terrace are paired doorways sharing a flat wooden porch with three pierced brackets. The original half-glazed, half-panelled doors both have windows to the inside sharing a stone sill, with small-pane leaded lights. Above each porch is a shallow segmental overlight with small-pane glazing and an engineering brick head.

Between ground and first floors runs a slightly projecting dentil string course of engineering brick headers and stretchers. On the first floor both gables have a wide window with a common brick soldier lintel (that to No. 37 is now obscured). Both windows have uPVC frames. The inner houses each have a three-light window above the bay window and a two-light window above the doorway. These have original wooden frames projecting slightly beyond the wall face, with small-pane leaded glazing (the two-light window at No. 33 has lost the leaded glazing to one light). The roof contains two brick stacks midway up the pitched roof, with two further stacks to the rear of the ridge.

The front gardens are bounded by a low brick wall of varying height with a coping of red curved engineering bricks and large sandstone blocks for the gate pintels and latches. No. 37 has a wooden gate; the other houses have replacement metal gates, with gate piers to No. 31.

Each house contains a hall, large front parlour, large rear room, narrow rear room (originally a scullery), four first-floor rooms, and cellar. The two outer houses additionally have small entrance lobbies. All houses retain their original staircases with closed strings, shaped wooden splat balusters (those to the two outer houses differing in shape from those to the two inner houses), wooden handrails and acorn finials to the newel posts. Three of the houses retain a pierced wooden screen over the cellar door in the shape of three heart-shaped flowers.

The entrance lobbies of the outer houses have decorative tile floors and inner screens with central doorways, narrow sidelights and semi-circular overlights with small-pane leaded glazing and stylised flowers to the sidelights. No. 37 has an original door with glazing to the upper part featuring leaded small panes and curved stylised flowers.

The four houses retain various original fixtures and fittings of particular note, including original two-panelled doors, originally painted to give the appearance of burr walnut, though some are now painted over. No. 31 and No. 35 retain their original parlour mantelpieces; that to No. 35 is painted to appear like burr walnut with an ebony mantel and daffodil tiles to either side of the grate. Some houses also have cast-iron bedroom mantelpieces. Original built-in cupboards and drawers next to chimneybreasts survive in some of the houses both downstairs and upstairs; that to the rear ground-floor room in No. 35 retains its burr walnut appearance, although painted over elsewhere. Cornices and picture rails are present in the front parlours and some picture rails elsewhere.

At the back of the rear yards, each house originally had a combined wash house, coal shed and toilet block, built with single-pitch roofs against the tall rear boundary wall. No. 31 no longer has its outhouses and the rear wall has been rebuilt. The outer yards are accessed by side gates and the central yards by two rear gates set at an angle to form an indent in the tall boundary wall.

Edgar Wood (1860-1935) was a renowned progressive architect and advocate of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and a founder member of the Northern Art Workers' Guild in 1896. His later buildings incorporated Art Nouveau and Expressionist motifs, culminating in the early twentieth century with his radical use of flat concrete roofs and strong geometrical patterning, marking him out as a pioneer of Modern architecture. His socialist ideals led him to design a small number of working-class terraces in the late nineteenth century, of which Broad Street is one. This terrace is architect-designed to a bespoke plan in contrast to the majority of bye-law houses constructed by builders to standard repetitive designs. The ingenious use of plot, layout and plan form produces houses with better-proportioned and illuminated rooms and varied profile and massing. A deliberately "rural" Arts and Crafts appearance is achieved through the use of shallow canted bay windows with small-pane leaded lights and steeply pitched slate roofs, which together with the common bricks give a subtlety of textural detailing.