Cobcar Terrace

Cobcar Terrace is a planned terrace of ten houses built in the mid-19th century for the Fitzwilliam estate, with 20th-century additions to the rear. The construction used coursed, dressed sandstone and a Welsh slate roof.

The two-storey terrace has a symmetrical front elevation. The central four houses are flanked by houses with pediments, with two further houses beyond. The two houses at the centre have their front doors together, each featuring a fanlight with radial glazing bars, set beneath peaked hoods linked to each other. Above, a single, blind first-floor window is centrally placed. These central houses have a single window to both ground and first floor. The other houses feature overlights above their boarded front doors, with glazing bars forming saltire crosses. The pedimented houses have an additional first-floor window above their front door and a glazed oculus with crossed glazing bars set in the pediment. Segmentally arched lintels, tooled to resemble voussoirs, sit above all openings, except for the hooded doors of the central houses. The ground-floor windows have sunken aprons, and all windows are vertical sliding sashes with 16 panes. A first-floor band and an eaves band with stone gutter brackets unify the elevation, continuing under the copings to the pediments. The gable ends have ashlar copings supported by heavy kneelers. Eight stone-built ridge stacks are present.

Historically, Elsecar was an industrial village established by the Earls Fitzwilliam, who had a nearby estate at Wentworth Woodhouse. The Fitzwilliams invested in coal mining and iron working in the late 18th century, constructing industrial buildings alongside workers’ housing, a church, and a school within what had previously been an agricultural landscape. The survival of these buildings makes Elsecar a significant place, illustrating three centuries of coal mining, Christian paternalism, and industrial expansion and decline. Cobcar Terrace, along with 1-9 Cobcar Lane, was built after the 1849-1850 Ordnance Survey map and likely commissioned by the fifth Earl Fitzwilliam (1786-1857). Workers' housing provided by the Fitzwilliam Estate included walled yards to the front and rear, as well as a separate allotment garden for each cottage.