10, Lansdowne Crescent

Large detached house, now divided into flats. Built between 1840 and 1868 with later additions and alterations. The building is constructed of brick with painted stucco finish and has a hipped slate roof with wide eaves carried on timber brackets. The stucco end stacks feature brick oversailing detail with pots. The plan is double-depth with the principal entrance in the right-return, leading to a hall and central staircase. The house is three storeys with a cellar.

The facade displays four first-floor windows. The stucco is lined to represent ashlar with a plain plinth and moulded first-floor sill band that breaks forward at each window with corbel brackets beneath. Similar brackets support the sills of the second-floor windows, which have plain architraves. First-floor windows are fitted with moulded eared architraves. Ground-floor windows have a double architrave—plain with a narrower moulded detail superimposed—together with a moulded cornice over each window decorated with fluted and moulded console brackets. The ground-floor windows are unequal 6 over 6 sashes extending to floor level, each accessed from a stone-flagged terrace by a roll-edged stone step incorporating a cast-iron ventilation grille to the cellar. The remaining windows throughout are 6 over 6 sashes in plain reveals.

The left-return features a narrow full-width single-storey extension. The right-return has the sill band continuing from the facade, with two 6 over 6 sashes to the first and second floors at the centre and right, a central entrance with a Tuscan-style porch (with a 20th-century glazed door), and a further 6 over 6 sash to the right.

The rear elevation is of painted brick with a two-storey outshut to the left. A moulded stone string course runs between the ground and first floors. Windows are mainly 6 over 6 sashes beneath segmental arches with plain reveals and stone sills. The rear door is a four-panel door with raised and fielded panels and bolection moulding, flanked by two-pane side-lights, with a scalloped arris to the stone lintel.

The interior retains original features including panelled doors and shutters, architraves, skirtings, cornices and centres, and a black marble fireplace. The dogleg staircase has slender turned balusters and a wreathed handrail. Extensive brick-paved cellars retain slate slabs and a large stone sink, with a cask drop to the rear east. A two-storey service range in painted brick and slate to the rear north includes 6 over 6 sashes beneath segmental arched heads and now forms a separate dwelling. A red brick and slate coach house to the south also forms a separate dwelling.

Because of their elevated position, vehicular access to these houses was normally from the east via Lansdowne Crescent Lane, which created a degree of formality to what would ordinarily be the rear elevations. The 1886 Ordnance Survey map shows this house and No.14 as exceptions, with carriage drives from the west off Lansdowne Crescent. Numbers 1 to 15 (consecutive) and 17 and 18 Lansdowne Crescent form a good group of listed buildings that compare well with other developments of this period in Worcester such as Britannia Square, Lark Hill, and Rainbow Hill Terrace.