56-64 Fitzwilliam Street and attached front garden walls

A mid-19th century terrace of five cottages, numbered 56-64 Fitzwilliam Street, along with attached front garden walls, was built for the Fitzwilliam estate. The terrace presents a symmetrical frontage, with a gabled central bay slightly projecting forward of the paired cottages on either side. The replacement, part-glazed doors have overlights beneath plain lintels. The central door is flanked by unequally-hung 10-pane sashes in cavetto-moulded surrounds, all set beneath a single hood supported on brackets. The flanking cottages have their door to the far side of similar paired sashes with bracketed sills. The first floor has paired, round-headed sashes to each bay, aligned with the ground-floor windows. A projecting eaves course, with stone gutter brackets, runs along the terrace, continuing beneath the central gable which features a central glazed oculus window. The gables have stone ashlar copings. Inserted roof-lights flank four stone-built ridge-stacks, which have bracketed tabling. Contemporary enclosure walls to the front yards have triangular copings and sweep down to the right to accommodate the sloping ground, between simple gate posts.

The terrace forms part of a broader historical context; from the late 18th century, Elsecar was an industrial village established by the Earls Fitzwilliam, who also owned Wentworth Woodhouse. The estate invested in coal mining and ironworking, constructing industrial buildings alongside workers’ housing, a church, and a school within what had previously been an agricultural landscape. The terrace of cottages is thought to have been commissioned by the fifth Earl Fitzwilliam (1786-1857), around the same time as the neighbouring Miners’ Lodging House built in 1853. The cottages were built with walled front and rear yards, and each cottage had a separate allotment garden, reflecting a high standard of housing provided by the Fitzwilliam Estate.