37-39 St John's Street

37-39 St John's Street is a Grade II* listed building constructed in red brick laid in Flemish bond under a roof of plain tiles. The building is L-shaped in plan, with a front range facing the street and a long range extending to the rear.

The exterior comprises two bays and three storeys with a cellar beneath a shallow pitched roof with wide ridge stacks at both ends. The eaves cornice of brick cogging continues along the rear range. A flight of semicircular steps leads up to the central doorway, which has a six-panelled door (not original) with the upper two panels glazed. The door surround features fluted jambs and a keyed lintel of voussoirs; the windows have flat arches with the same lintel detail. The canted bay window to the left of the door contains two-over-two pane horned sashes. The window to the right is a four-over-four pane sash, as are those on the first floor, though the one on the right is a modern replacement. The second floor has smaller two-over-two pane sashes, both modern replacements. The left return has a single window with a Gothic brick arch and Y-tracery. The rear, accessed through a passageway on the right-hand side, is plain with modern apertures.

The interior has been substantially remodelled and retains very little from its earliest phase. The bay window has a panelled soffit and jambs. Three four-panelled doors, probably dating to the early 19th century, survive. The ground floor contains a Victorian-style fireplace with tiled sides and grey marble surround with brackets supporting the lintel, also probably early 19th century in date. The first-floor room on the right has a round-arched fireplace with roll moulding and plain timber surround. Two small 19th-century cast-iron fireplaces with timber surrounds are located on the second floor. The roof structure has been replaced.

The principal area of special interest is a panoramic room occupying the south-west corner of the first floor, measuring approximately 4.5 metres by 2.7 metres. The four walls have been painted with oils directly onto plaster in the space between the dado rail and the ceiling. The dado is not original. The east wall shows the ghosting of an earlier fireplace, which was replaced, probably in the mid-19th century, by a cast-iron fireplace with tiled sides painted black and a painted timber surround with lintel supported on brackets. Small sections of plaster have deteriorated and no wall painting survives above the door on the north wall, but overall the paintings have survived remarkably well.

The paintings depict a hunting scene and various buildings in a picturesque landscape, executed with little regard to perspective but possessing great charm and interest. The long east wall shows in the foreground a hunting scene with mounted huntsmen (and one woman) in green, black or scarlet coats galloping after hounds in pursuit of the fox. In the background is a central craggy prominence bearing a picturesque building with castellated parapets, elongated towers and huge pointed arch portals, resembling Haddon Hall or Bolsover Castle. On the far left is a Gothic building of ecclesiastical character and a multi-storey mill. The landscape continues onto the south wall up to the window frame, where in the foreground stands a lady in a long cloak and bonnet with a dog beside a river. On the far side of the river is a pedimented Classical temple with four fluted columns; the end is lost in a dense clump of trees out of which protrudes a cupola with dome supported by a peristyle. On the left side of the west wall is depicted the east front of Kedleston Hall and deer park with a mountainous background. An undulating landscape occupies the rest of the wall with a hare coursing scene on the right; in the foreground is a man with two dogs, whose face possesses such realistic character that it is tempting to think it a portrait. On the north wall, up to the door, is a large rambling castle by the sea and a smaller building with a red hipped roof on the left. The castle is painted with less precision than the temple and Kedleston Hall, and it is likely that these two latter buildings were copied from an illustration.