16-20 Lee Street

This is a terrace of three late Georgian houses built in 1823, numbers 16, 18 and 20 Lee Street. The houses are constructed of hand-made red brick laid in Flemish bond with stone dressings. Number 16 has a pantile roof covering, while numbers 18 and 20 are roofed in slate.

The row of three houses faces east onto Lee Street and is set back from the pavement behind a low boundary wall enclosing a small garden. The wall has been rebuilt and is not of special interest. Each house has rear service wings.

The terrace displays a pleasing late Georgian regularity without being symmetrical. Numbers 18 and 20 appear more as a pair, while number 16 sits lower down due to the steep northward slope of Lee Street. The houses have two storeys and attics, with numbers 18 and 20 also having basement kitchens. The pitched roofs have brick ridge stacks, and number 16 has a plain timber eaves cornice.

The regular fenestration consists of eight-over-eight pane sash windows on the ground floor and six-over-six pane sashes on the first floor, all with slender glazing bars, timber sills and rusticated wedge stone lintels. The lintels have been painted white on numbers 16 and 18. The elegant neo-Classical doorcases have fluted sides and a moulded cornice surmounted by a dentilled open-bed pediment. They have semi-circular fanlights with delicate glazing bars arranged in a curved V-shape intersected by an inverted curved V. The six-panelled doors with raised and fielded panels survive on numbers 20 and 16, although the four upper panels on the latter have been replaced with glazing. Number 20 has a 20th-century four-panelled door with glazed upper panels.

From the right, number 16 has two bays with the front door occupying the right-hand bay. Between the first-floor windows is a decorative metal fire-plate bearing the inscription 'ROYAL' with a crown above and a cormorant with seaweed in its mouth below. This is the Liver Bird, the crest of Liverpool, where the fire insurance company known as The Royal was established in 1845.

Number 18 has three bays with the door in the central bay, and a wide carriage arch in the right-hand bay which provides access to the rear of number 16. This arch has a segmental form of rubbed bricks and a large double-leaf batten door painted black. There is a single bay between numbers 18 and 20 which has a narrow opening with a semi-circular arch of rubbed bricks, providing access to the rear of both houses. Above this opening is a false window in the same style as the other fenestration, added to provide regularity.

Number 20 has two bays with the front door on the left-hand bay. The low boundary walls in front of all the houses have been rebuilt but are in their original positions.

The rear (west) elevation of number 16 has tall, paired two-over-two pane sash windows on the ground floor, and a six-over-six pane sash under a cambered brick arch above. The two-storey wing is lit on the west side by a semi-circular arched window with radial glazing bars, and a multi-pane, shallow bow window above. The single-storey service range has modern windows and doors.

The rear elevations of numbers 18 and 20 are similar to each other. Either side of the central passageway is a canted bay which has a sash window with bordered glazing bars, a first-floor sash window under a cambered brick arch, and dormer windows wholly in the roof space with horizontal sliding sashes. The two-storey wings are lit on the west side by sash windows with a varying number of panes. The north side of number 20 has an enlarged window opening with a 20th-century window. The single-storey range of outbuildings at number 18 has been rebuilt in the late 20th century.

The houses have a similar plan form, basically consisting of an entrance hall which opens into two reception rooms on one side and another room in the rear wing. The staircase at the end of the hall leads up to four first-floor rooms: two at the front, one at the side and another at the rear. One large room has been created at the front of number 18 by the removal of the party wall between two rooms which otherwise remain intact. The attic is accessed via a secondary stair off the landing and has two rooms. Numbers 18 and 20 have two rooms in the basement, formerly the kitchen and service area.

The internal fittings, fixtures and joinery in the three houses survive with a high level of intactness, and in many respects are of the same design. In the entrance hall a panelled arched opening frames the dog-leg stair which has an open string with decorative carved tread ends, slender round newel posts on square bases, and two stick balusters per tread supporting a mahogany handrail which sweeps gracefully upwards to gain height at the turn.

The skirting boards are generally narrow with roll mouldings, as are the cornices where they occur, and some rooms have a moulded picture rail. The front reception room of number 16 has a wide frieze of decorative plasterwork. Six-panelled doors with panel mouldings and narrow moulded doorframes are used throughout, except for some subsidiary rooms which have four-panelled doors with chamfered panels. Two of the bedroom doors in number 16 have brass finger plates, one depicting a lady in flowing dress (now painted over) and the other a sinuous Art Nouveau design, both possibly dating to the turn of the 20th century.

The original fireplaces on the ground floors have not survived, with the exception of the grate in number 20, but the bedrooms mostly retain fireplaces of various designs, including the typical early 19th-century reeded and roundel type in number 16, decorative cast iron fireplaces, and more simple timber surrounds, mostly all painted white. In some of the reception rooms and principal bedrooms the projection for the fireplace extends on one side to provide either a cupboard with panelled and glazed doors, or some form of shelving. Most of the rooms are carpeted so it is not known how many of the original floor coverings survive, although number 16 retains a stone-flagged entrance hall, and number 20 some floorboards.

A number of original features also survive in the service areas which illustrate their former uses. Well-worn stone steps lead down to the basements in numbers 18 and 20 where there are two large rooms, one of which retains a cast iron cooking range (this is boarded over in number 20). The basement of number 18 has a stone-tiled floor and a well, now covered over, and the second room retains a hob grate. There is an alcove in the kitchen in the rear wing of number 16 where the range used to be, and along the same wall a series of fitted cupboards from floor to ceiling which probably date to the first half of the 20th century. The attic rooms in numbers 18 and 20 have original plank and batten doors with strap hinges and latches. In number 18 one of the attic rooms has hooks in the ceiling and the wire from the service bells, whilst the other room has the original lock on the door indicating that it was a servant's bedroom.

One of the most significant features in the row is the remnants of the painted wall scheme in number 20. Photographs taken by a former owner, probably in the 1990s, show the entrance hall, staircase and landing painted to resemble large blocks of ashlared stone, the joints painted in thin black lines. Analysis has not been carried out but it appears to have been executed with an oil-based paint directly onto the plaster. The photographs of the landing appear also to show a wide frieze painted to resemble much narrower blocks. Much of the painting in the hall has been destroyed by the application of 20th-century plaster, and although most of the remaining scheme has been papered over, the slightly raised lines imitating the fine joints can be seen underneath, indicating that it still survives. Some of the painting in the entrance hall, above the front door, and along the rear hall around the door of the rear reception room, is currently exposed (2013).