27,28, Frenchwood Street

A pair of town houses built in the later 19th century. They are located on Frenchwood Street in Preston and were originally part of a larger row of late Georgian houses, with the houses to the left recently demolished. The town houses are constructed of red brick in a Flemish bond pattern, with sandstone dressings and a slate roof. They have a double-depth plan, with each house having a single front and a coupled rear extension. Each house is two storeys high and has cellars.

The architectural appearance is simple with a plain frieze and a prominent moulded cornice. The doorways, situated centrally and coupled together, have moulded architraves with dentilled cornices resting on consoles, and feature four-panel doors with rectangular overlights. Each house has one window at ground floor level and two above. These are four-pane sashes with raised sills and wedge lintels (the ground floor window of No. 27 was temporarily boarded at the time of the survey); small-paned casement windows are present in the cellar and protected by gratings. Ridge chimneys are also present. The left return wall has been rebuilt.

At the rear, No. 27 has 12-pane sash windows on both floors, while the rear extension has coupled eight-paned sashes on the ground floor (the upper floor windows were unglazed during the inspection). The interior of No. 27 includes moulded plaster cornices to the entrance hall and front ground floor room, which are heavily encrusted with paint and partly damaged. There’s also a dog-legged staircase with stick balusters and a wreathed mahogany handrail, a skylight with coloured margin panes, an attic staircase within a cupboard on the landing, and a cellar containing a fireplace and a central drain.