210-212, SHARROW VALE ROAD

Workers' houses, early 19th century. Built of handmade bricks with coursed, squared rubble stone plinth and stone slate roof.

The building comprises three separate dwellings with a complex internal arrangement. Number 212 is a through cottage; Number 210 consists of two back-to-back cottages built against the party wall. The rectangular plan incorporates two storeys over cellars with attic rooms, presenting two bays wide across the front. The roof is double pitched with a single central ridge stack containing eight flues.

The front elevation features two windows to each of the ground and first floors. The windows have camber arches of soldier bricks, no sills, and are taller on the ground floor. They retain original three-light fixed casements with small pane glazing, and smaller openings with strap hinges. Upper windows have decorative wooden shutters. The front door of Number 212 to the left has a stone sill and camber arch of soldier bricks; a later door was inserted to the right. The east gable elevation contains two original doorways serving the two cottages in Number 210, now blocked.

The rear elevation displays two cellar windows in the stone plinth and similar windows to those on the front, though these have lost their glazing bars. The upper right window has been replaced with a modern window. The rear door of Number 212 matches the front door detail and has steps up.

Internally, the through cottage contains two rooms on the ground and first floors, an attic room, and a brick barrel-vaulted cellar. The two back-to-back cottages each have half of a brick barrel-vaulted cellar and a single room on the ground and first floors, with the front cottage occupying the whole of the attic room. Notable features include stone flag floors and original floorboards, timber staircases with kite winders, six and four fielded-panel doors, planked doors, moulded architraves, and a number of original fireplaces.

The property is bounded by original dry-stone walling, with steps down to Porter Brook at the rear.

The building was probably constructed by the Wilson family, who rented and subsequently acquired the land from Earl Fitzwilliam of Wentworth Woodhouse, to accommodate their workers. The Wilsons owned the nearby water-powered Sharrow Snuff Mills (Grade II*) and the steam-powered Westbrook Snuff Mills (Grade II) on Sharrow Vale Road. The headrace for the snuff mills' dam is fed from Porter Brook and runs through a culvert approximately three metres from the rear of these cottages.