Numbers 59 And 61 With Gatepiers To Garden

A pair of houses dating from the 1840s and 1850s, possibly designed by Walter Scott. The houses are constructed with ashlar facing and have a Welsh slate roof. They are built in a picturesque asymmetrical French Renaissance style. The houses are two storeys high with attics, and each dwelling has a different plan and orientation.

The house on the right faces the park, with an advanced gabled wing to the right of a narrow, full-height gabled porch. The elevation facing the street has an advanced gable to the right, featuring a two-light window on each floor. The lower window has stressed voussoirs and a keystone, while the upper window has a broken pediment. To the left of this gable, the two storeys are raised over a basement, and each floor has three narrow, round-arched windows, linked on the first floor by a continuous string course.

The house on the left has a more compact plan, with a central entrance hall and the main bay in an advanced Dutch gable to the right. A flat-roofed porch runs across the left-hand sections, with a blocked round-headed window and a segmentally-arched doorway with paired panelled doors. An octagonal turret over the door may house the staircase. The house has two-light windows with flat arched heads, featuring stressed voussoirs in the right-hand gable, and similarly above to the left, with a small Dutch gable over. End wall stacks are present.

Paired panelled gate piers with shallow pyramidal copings stand before each house. The houses are part of the original development of Birkenhead Park, laid out by Joseph Paxton between 1844 and 1847.