College House and 1,2 and 3 Driffield Terrace and attached railings, walls and gate piers

College House and 1, 2 and 3 Driffield Terrace and attached railings, walls and gate piers

A group of houses dating from around 1860, with an extension made around 1900, possibly by Penty. Numbers 1, 2 and 3 are faced in stucco, while College House is built of mottled brick with stone and red brick dressings. All have slate roofs. The buildings originally functioned as houses and partly as a school.

The north-west facades are three storeys high with attics and cellars. Three sill bands and a storey band extend across the full width of the earlier stuccoed fronts. No. 1 has two bays with sash windows divided into large square panes with margin panes and segmental rusticated heads. The left-hand ground-floor window surround projects forward slightly under a cornice. The door in the right-hand bay has two recessed panels above two lozenge panels with an architrave and keystone. The remainder of the stuccoed facade to the right forms a mirrored symmetrical composition with 2-2-2 windows. The outer pairs of windows are more closely spaced and have sashed windows with segmental heads glazed in square panes. At ground and first-floor level, the paired windows to the outer bays have surrounds projecting forward under a cornice. At ground-floor level the two central bays have adjacent windows with doorways to each side. The right-hand doorway, formerly to No. 3, is now blocked and contains a window. The left-hand doorway to No. 2 has a recessed door with two over three panels and an overlight with segmental top. Above the deep modillioned eaves, the earlier part of the building has four attic dormers with segmental tops and chimneys to left and right and between houses.

College House features a wide casement window with a semicircular arch to the left of its doorway. Above, paired windows appear at first and second-floor levels. The first-floor windows are casements, each with two lights and two transoms, with segmental brick arches and keystones. The second-floor windows are glazing-bar sashes with segmental arches. To the right, a bay projects slightly with two stone storey bands and alternating red brick quoins to the upper storeys. On the ground floor is a pair of sashes with glazing bars to their upper leaves and segmental brick arches with keystones. The single first-floor window is similar, and the second-floor window is a glazing-bar sash. The attic is lit by a tripartite glazing-bar sash window with segmental arched head within a shaped gable with coping and three ball finials. The doorway to College House has an architrave with a semicircular arch with rusticated archivolt, mask keystone, Doric pilasters, and a cornice hood on brackets. The door has four panels above a single panel.

The left-hand return wall of No. 1, facing north-east towards Dalton Terrace, includes a two-storey porch with a blocked doorway. On the south-east side No. 1 has a two-storey canted bay window. Numbers 2 and 3 each have a two-storey bow with three windows to each floor. College House has a three-storey brick canted bay.

The basement areas at the front are enclosed by railings with steeple-shaped finials and are bridged by three sandstone landings. Railings, partly of slightly different design, extend for approximately 25 metres along Driffield Terrace. At the north-east side the area railings return to abut the porch, and railings extend south-eastwards from the porch along Dalton Terrace to its junction with The Mount. They are set on a low wall of squared limestone with sandstone copings and contain a gate. The railings and wall extend south-westwards along The Mount and contain two pairs of gate piers and an end pier. The piers are cylindrical above octagonal bases and have an annular groove below a cap carved to resemble a section of fluted Greek Doric column. The gates are of cast iron.

Numbers 1, 2 and 3 Driffield Terrace form, with Numbers 5, 6 and 7, the two end blocks of an incomplete terrace development. College House is a later addition.