Number 21 And Attached Railings To Front And Brick Walls To Rear

Terraced house, Church Row, Camden

Number 21 is a terraced house built around 1720, refaced in the late 19th century in Georgian style. It forms part of a most important group of early 18th-century houses in Church Row.

The exterior is constructed in brown brick with red brick dressings. The ground floor is finished in stucco with a plain 1st floor band. The building comprises 3 storeys, an attic, and a basement, with a slated mansard roof featuring dormers. The façade has 3 windows. The principal entrance features a good architraved doorcase with pilaster jambs and an enriched console-bracketed hood above. The fanlight has a radial pattern and the door is panelled. The sashes on the ground and first floors are slightly recessed, with gauged red brick segmental arches, and are 2-paned. A stone and brick cornice rises to the parapet.

Interior

The building is laid out with two rooms and a rear closet to each principal floor. A later 19th-century closet is set on the half-landing of the staircase compartment to the rear of the entrance. All doors are panelled.

The hallway is fully panelled with ovolo moulding, dado rails, and box cornices. Flat pilaster strips mark the opening into a broader staircase hall, which is fully panelled at ground and first floor levels. Above this, panelling extends only to ramped dado height on the flights, with no panelling above the second floor.

The staircase from ground to second floor has an open string with two twisted balusters per stair and decorated tread ends. Paired newels sit on landings. The flights below the second half-landing have an arched handrail, possibly a later addition. Typical early 18th-century moulded handrails serve the upper flights. The staircase from second floor to attic is a closed string type with turned balusters and square newels, without ramping or dado panelling.

The ground floor front room is fully panelled with ovolo mouldings, dado rail, and box cornice. It contains a simple 18th-century marble fireplace fitted with an early 19th-century box grate and an 18th-century mantle with dentil decoration. A corner cupboard with round-arched top and curved shelves is also present. The ground floor rear room is similarly fully panelled and has a corner fireplace adjoining a narrow unheated closet, also panelled. The closet on the half-landing is set behind shutters.

The first floor front and rear rooms are now connected via folding doors, with the rear room containing a closet. Both are fully panelled with ovolo mouldings, dado rails, and moulded cornices. The front room retains original shutters with bars, an 18th-century marble fireplace with 19th-century grate, and an original carved mantlepiece with fretwork decoration.

The second floor front room is subdivided but retains unmoulded panelling with dado rail and cornice. It contains an 18th-century fireplace with early 19th-century grate and cupboard. An inserted wall with sympathetic panelling has been added. The second floor rear room is fully panelled with cornice, has an 18th-century fireplace with early 19th-century grate, and opens to a closet now used as a bathroom.

The third floor landing features a curious cupboard incorporating a resited sash window. The front rooms are divided by horizontal boarding. The basement contains a closed string stair with particularly substantial turned balusters and a square newel. Both basement rooms have plank doors, and the front area also has a plank door. The front room retains a dresser and a fireplace with eared surround and bolection moulded frieze supporting the mantle. The rear room has a very large tiled opening in the corner stack for a former kitchen range.

The house is a very complete and textbook example of a relatively simple early 18th-century house, little altered in its interior arrangement and detailing.

The subsidiary features include attached cast-iron railings with torch flambé finials to the area, and brick walls to the long rear garden.