35-39, PEMBROKE PLACE

35-39 Pembroke Place

A group of three houses built in the early to mid-1840s, facing south to Pembroke Place. The group comprises a single house at No 35 and a semi-detached pair at Nos 37 and 39. Each frontage house has an attached building to its rear, originally part of a row of court dwellings but now forming a rear extension.

FRONTAGE BUILDINGS

The frontage buildings are constructed of red-brown brick with sandstone dressings, though the façades have later rendering. They have slate roofs. Each house is three storeys high and one bay wide. Stone cills and lintels frame the windows, and moulded stone eaves cornices run along the roofline.

The ground floor of Nos 35-37 has a modern shop front, while No 39 retains a late 19th-century shop front that has been altered but still preserves corbels, fascia and a timber hinged gate to the entrance. Many windows to No 35 are blocked, though some original sashes survive behind them. Windows to Nos 37-39 have been replaced. The flank elevations contain a blocked three-centred arched window with a stone cill at ground floor level and single windows to the first and second floors, most of which are now blocked.

The internal plan of each house is two rooms deep, with the stair compartment originally placed between the front and rear rooms, though in No 39 the stair has been relocated to the rear. Nos 37-39 retain parts of the original stair but otherwise have few original features. No 35 retains plaster cornices, part of its stair with turned newels and stick balusters, some panelled doors and architraves.

ATTACHED DWELLINGS TO THE REAR

The three dwellings attached to the rear are lower and narrower than the frontage houses, each three storeys high and one bay wide. They have stone cills and lintels to windows and moulded cornices matching the frontage buildings. Many openings are blocked, though some original sashes survive. Round-headed doorways with brick arches provide access. Map evidence indicates the houses originally had basement areas, now infilled. The elevation of the house to the rear of No 39 is rendered.

The plan of each rear dwelling consists of one room per floor with a narrow winding stair against the rear wall, serving only the first to second floor flights. The interiors are sparse, with simple joinery and minimal decorative detail.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Nos 35-39 Pembroke Place do not appear on Gage's map of 1841 but are shown on the Ordnance Survey first edition of 1848. They were originally part of a symmetrical group of four houses, comprising Nos 37 and 39 as a semi-detached pair, flanked by single houses at No 35 to the west and No 41 to the east. Between them lay two narrow courts named Watkinson's Terrace and Watkinson's Buildings, each lined with two facing rows of four dwellings that abutted the frontage buildings on Pembroke Place, with those to the rear of the central pair placed back-to-back. Behind No 35 is the sole surviving unit of the west side of Watkinson's Terrace. Behind Nos 37 and 39 remain the first unit of the east side of Watkinson's Terrace and its back-to-back partner on the west side of Watkinson's Buildings. No 41 and the east side of Watkinson's Buildings have been demolished.

The three rear buildings are very rare survivals of court dwellings, a term describing a building type that emerged in the late 18th century in the expanding industrial towns of the north and midlands, usually built by small speculative developers as cheap, high-density housing. In Liverpool such courts typically comprised rows of houses built along a narrow paved yard set at right angles to the main street, accessed by a narrow passage between the frontage houses. Several parallel courts could exist off one road, with houses on one court placed back-to-back with those of an adjacent court, as occurred here with Pembroke Place.

Court construction burgeoned in Liverpool between 1820 and 1840 in response to the city's massive growth as an international port and its consequent population expansion, including large numbers of poor unskilled workers. Some 86,000 people were housed in courts by 1840, by far the largest area of purpose-built working-class housing in England. Liverpool's courts were among the worst in the country, embodying three evils of low-class housing: courts themselves, back-to-back construction, and worst of all, cellar dwellings. Courts were notorious for lack of light, ventilation and overcrowding, with single houses frequently occupied by several families. Sanitation consisted merely of a communal water pump and privy. Epidemic diseases such as typhus were rife and mortality rates high.

By the late 1830s Liverpool's politicians were beginning to confront these appalling housing conditions, encouraged by the research of Dr William Henry Duncan (1805-1863), a lifelong campaigner for improved sanitation and housing for the poor. His experience as a Liverpool general practitioner prompted him to publish an influential pamphlet, 'The Physical Causes of the High Mortality Rate in Liverpool' (1843). Duncan was appointed the city's Medical Officer of Health in 1847, the first such appointment in the nation. Liverpool secured the Health of Towns and Building Act (1842), which prohibited courts that were inadequately lit, and those at Pembroke Place are likely among the last erected before such restrictions took effect.

Pembroke Place's configuration, with more substantial houses forming the 'polite' endpieces to rows of lower-status dwellings, demonstrates how different classes of dwelling often co-existed in densely-developed urban areas of the early 19th century. While the court formation has largely disappeared, these are very rare survivals of this once-numerous but now near-extinct building type, and are almost certainly the last remnants in Liverpool.