32, Church Street

No. 32 Church Street is a house from the early 19th century, featuring red Flemish-bond brickwork with some traces of tuck pointing. The slate hipped roof is mostly hidden behind high parapets. The building has three storeys and cellars.

The asymmetrical front has three square recessed double-hung sash windows with six panes on the second floor, set under slightly curved rubbed brick arches. The central window is blind, with painted simulated panes. The first floor has three similar but more conventionally proportioned twelve-pane windows. On the ground floor, there are two similar windows and a black plinth with two cellar accesses, which are boarded with round vent holes. The entrance features an off-centre pedimented doorcase with a moulded architrave and pulvinated frieze, leading to a slightly recessed door with four raised-and-fielded panels and two glazed lights. The flanks and soffit of the recess are panelled, and there is an iron recessed boot scraper in the plinth.

Inside, the entrance passage is very complete, with a distorted semicircular rear arch on panelled pilasters and a framed side partition. One door has a reeded architrave with paterae in the corners. The main front room features a contemporary plaster cornice. The original dogleg stair at the rear has column newels, bracket tread-ends, and a hardwood handrail, and is illuminated by a large, rebuilt double-hung sash window in the rear wall, which has margin glazing and a reeded surround. On either side of the stairs are small contemporary closets with borrowed light from square margin-glazed windows with coloured glass inserts. One closet serves as a lobby to the former gallery that linked with the Admiral's Ballroom in West Street (not included). On the first floor, there are two linked doors within an elliptical-headed recess with a painted architrave. The front first-floor room, now subdivided, has an early 19th-century marble fireplace with panelled pilasters, corner roundels, and a mantel shelf.