1 to 15, Old Row and attached front garden walls

A terrace of fifteen cottages and attached front garden walls, built in the late 18th century and altered in the 20th century. The terrace was constructed for the Fitzwilliam estate in the industrial village of Elsecar, near Wentworth Woodhouse. The cottages are built of coursed rubble sandstone with Welsh slate roofing, previously stone slate. They are two storeys high with a single bay each, arranged in pairs with doors together, except for number 1 at the right end, which has its door to the right of its ground-floor window. Door lintels are tooled to resemble voussoirs. Later casement windows have glazing bars; these openings have concrete sills and rendered lintels. Seven brick stacks remain on the ridge. The original window openings to the rear have tooled lintels. The attached front enclosure walls have heavy domed copings. The terrace was built for the fourth Earl Fitzwilliam (1748-1833) to house workers for Elsecar New Colliery, which opened in 1795 and employed 95 men and boys by 1798. This terrace was among the earliest, potentially the first, rows of industrial workers’ houses built by the estate. A break in the building line between numbers 10 and 11 suggests the row was constructed in two phases. The Fitzwilliam Estate provided workers’ housing of a superior quality, including walled yards to the front and rear, and separate allotment gardens for each cottage. The survival of buildings like Old Row contributes significantly to Elsecar’s historical importance, illustrating three centuries of coal mining, Christian paternalism, and industrial boom and decline.