Numbers 6-22 Royal College Street, And Attached Railings And Bollard In Pedestrian Way Of Number 12

Numbers 6 to 22 Royal College Street comprise a terrace of nine houses, built in two phases during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Nos. 14 to 22 were likely constructed around the late 18th century by Joseph Kirkman and Alexander Hendy as part of the development of Lord Camden's estate, intended to provide housing for working people. They are built of yellow stock brick with stuccoed ground floors and a continuous sill band to the second floor. The houses are arranged over four storeys and a cellar, each with two windows. Round-arched entrances have later doors and fanlights; the first floors have iron window guards, and the windows have gauged brick flat arches. A parapet runs along the roofline. Nos. 6 to 10 are an early 19th-century addition, featuring a symmetrical design with the central house slightly projecting. They also have three storeys and basements, with number 8 containing an attic. Numbers 6 and 10 have round-arched ground floor openings, while number 8 has square-headed openings. All feature fanlights above the doorways and sash windows with glazing bars. The upper floors have gauged brick flat arches to later two-pane sashes, with number 8 having an attic lunette sash. Brick modillions on the stone-coped parapets of numbers 6 and 10 sweep upward to the higher parapet of number 8 in the form of a pediment. These houses did not appear on a map of 1806 but were shown by Greenwood's Map of 1827, flanking a lane known as Upper College Grove. Number 12, built in the early 19th century, bridges Upper College Grove between numbers 10 and 14, providing pedestrian access to College Grove via a round-arched passage containing an original cast-iron bollard. This house is three storeys high with a basement and has two windows. It features a round-arched entrance with a rusticated keystone, fanlight, and later door, along with gauged brick flat arches to recessed sash windows with glazing bars on the ground floor and two-pane sashes above. There is a parapet to the roof. Interior features are reported to be original, although they have not been inspected. Attached cast-iron railings are present to the areas. Historically, Kirkman and Hendy were early speculative builders operating under an Estate Act of 1788 for the construction of housing on Lord Camden’s Kentish Town estate. The houses appear on the Stockdale Map of 1797. The French poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud resided at number 8 Royal College Street from May to July 1873.