Tapley House (Number 33) And Mentmore (Number 34)

Tapley House (Number 33) and Mentmore (Number 34)

A pair of houses dating from around 1900, built in red brick with imitation timber framing and plastered panels beneath Welsh slate roofs. The houses form a handed pair arranged in an approximately U-shaped plan.

The exterior comprises two storeys with six first-floor windows. A four-window middle section features twin central octagonal turrets, projecting gabled outer wings, and entrances positioned in the angles between. The base is marked by a chamfered plinth capped with blue brick.

Each house is approached by a flight of stone steps with low coped balustrade walls leading to an internal entrance porch. The basket-arched outer doorway has chamfered jambs, rusticated brick quoins, and a carved stone head with moulded imposts. The spandrels are panelled, and an architrave frames the opening. The porches contain polychrome tiled floors, dado rails, and part-glazed panelled doors with shaped lights set in glazed and panelled screens with engraved lights. Number 34 features a later two-fold panelled outer door beneath a radial fanlight with slender copper glazing bars.

The octagonal turrets are lit by plate-glass casements at each floor. The outer wings each have a projecting ground-floor brick bay window flanked by shaped wooden brackets that carry a jettied first floor. The bay windows have two lights to the front and one to each side, with sills and shaped lintels. A deep continuous dentilled and moulded wooden first-floor string course runs across the facade. Balconies above the entrances are fitted with pierced splat balusters, moulded piers, and rails. Number 34 retains an original cross-window to the balcony with moulded architrave and leaded lights incorporating coloured glass; Number 33 has a later French window and overlight.

The wings are clad with vertical timber panelling to the front and sides. Each contains a single tripartite four-light window with a central projecting triangular-pointed two-light section, set beneath a continuous pulvinated cornice. A Y-framed gable with deep bracketed eaves crowns each wing. The central turrets feature a similar cornice at eaves level, above which rises a short vertical-panelled octagonal stage topped by a short spire with splayed base and ball finial.

Moulded bargeboards with finials ornament the gables. Shaped and pierced eaves boards run across the remainder of the facade, including the turrets. All windows except those to the balconies have moulded wood mullions with large panes below and smaller segmental-arched panes above. Crested ridge-tiles crown the roof. Three ridge stacks with panelled sides and dentilled cornices carry original pots.

The right return features a pair of flat-roofed ground-floor wooden bay windows with glazing matching the front windows, a continuous first-floor corniced string course, and a pair of single sashes to the first floor. The left return is similar but has a brick chimneybreast to the right in place of a bay window.

The interiors contain moulded cornices and ceilings with round-arched openings to bay windows set with moulded corbels and archivolts. Number 34 preserves an Adam-style ceiling in the front room and a 17th-century-style panelled surround and overmantel to the recessed front fireplace. Both houses have staircases featuring bolection-panelled strings, pierced splat balusters, and bold newels with carved relief panels.

These houses form part of a series of stylish dwellings erected around Peoples Park in the 1890s and early 1900s, when Grimsby was flourishing as a fishing port.