Numbers 14 And 15 With Gatepiers To Front Garden

Numbers 14 and 15 are a pair of houses built around 1836, located in Rock Park, Rock Ferry. They are designed in the Italianate style and feature stucco exteriors with rustication on the ground floor, topped by a Welsh slate roof. The buildings are two storeys high with an attic and basement, arranged in a symmetrical layout with a central entrance for each house, accessed through porches at the angles formed by the outer gabled wings.

Each house has single-storey porches with round arches, flanked by 4-pane round-arched sash windows. The basement area is enclosed by a cast-iron balustrade. The upper windows are also 4-pane sashes set within shouldered architraves, and all windows in No. 14 have been renewed in their original openings. A round-arched attic window is positioned at the apex of each gabled wing. The eaves overhang on brackets, and the bargeboards return to form a pediment at the gable.

No. 14 features an additional advanced hipped gable to the left, which includes a tripartite sash window on the ground floor and a 4-pane sash window above. The elevation facing the Esplanade has a two-storey canted bay window in the outer gable, complete with a parapet, and a balcony on the first floor in the central range. The cast-iron balustrade and canopy supported by cast-iron columns are preserved only at No. 14. A dormer window is set back in a segmental pediment that interrupts the eaves cornice in the central range.

The houses are complemented by paired square gate piers at the street, each topped with shallow pyramidal caps. They are part of the original development of Rock Park, which was laid out in 1836 by J. Bennison.