16, Lansdowne Crescent

This detached house, built as a rectory for St. Nicholas’s Church, dates from 1860 to 1865, with subsequent additions and alterations. Designed by William Jeffery Hopkins and built by Joseph Woods, it is constructed of red brick with polychromatic stone dressings, topped with a plain clay tile roof and decorative stacks with ornate corbelled caps and pots. The house has two storeys with a basement and attic, featuring three first-floor windows. The stucco detailing includes steps leading to the entrance, a capping course to the plinth, buttress copings, window surrounds, relieving arches, a string course, and dentilled eaves to the entrance bay.

The building follows a double-depth, double-fronted plan with a service range located to the east. The principal (entrance) elevation faces north onto Lansdowne Crescent. Its design is asymmetrical, incorporating three bays in the Domestic Gothic Revival style. The central entrance bay projects slightly, topped with a steep, pyramidal roof; the bay to the right also projects and is covered by a gabled roof. The left side of the elevation is terminated by a tall, buttressed stack. The first floor has three mullioned windows, each with differing designs, all featuring cusped upper parts to their surrounds, and 1/1 sash windows. The left window has a two-light design with chamfered heads that break the eave line, with a raised portion of roof above. The central window has three trefoil-headed lights and the right-hand window has two square-headed lights.

Eleven steps lead to the entrance, featuring a pierced partial infill to the intrados of the pointed arch above a recessed pair of doors, with a glazed upper portion featuring a single horizontal glazing bar and a solid panel below. The door frame has stopped chamfers. A three-light mullioned window is located immediately to the left of the entrance, alongside a smaller, trefoil-headed, single-light window. To the right of the entrance is a canted oriel window with a 4/4 sash window between two 2/2 sashes, and a hipped roof. A blocked basement opening is located to the left of the entrance.

Inside, original joinery details are preserved, including four-panel doors with stopped chamfers, architraves, skirtings, and a staircase. Some fireplaces remain. This house represents a well-executed example of a Gothic Revival dwelling from the 1860s, distinguished by its use of materials contrasting with the earlier 19th-century stuccoed houses along Lansdowne Crescent.