28 Charlotte Street

28 Charlotte Street is a terraced town house built around 1766. The building is constructed of yellow stock brick with red brick arches, and features timber sliding sash windows and a ground-floor shopfront.

The house rises four storeys above basement and attic, with a three-bay façade. The attic, rebuilt in the mid-20th century, has a flat roof set back behind a parapet. The building follows the familiar town house plan, with a hall and dog-leg staircase along the south party wall, and two rooms on each floor—one facing front, one facing back—with two chimney stacks in the opposing party wall. The ground floor extends to fill the plot, incorporating a mid-20th-century studio to the rear. A small water closet projects from the rear between the ground and first-floor landings. The second and third floors have been altered to create a bedroom, bathroom and small lobby from what was originally a large front room spanning the building's width.

The principal ground-floor rooms are no longer accessible from the residential entrance hall; the original doorways survive but are sealed shut, as the space is now used commercially and accessed through the shopfront. The internal basement stair remains but is similarly closed off from the domestic areas and is now accessed externally via a metal stair through a light-well to the rear.

Above the ground floor, the façade displays three storeys of progressively squarer sash windows, all with flat splayed arches in rubbed red brick. The windows are multi-paned with glazing bars: six-over-six on the first and second floors, three-over-three on the third. The first-floor windows have lowered sills, an early 19th-century alteration, giving them elongated proportions with margin lights at top and bottom. The glass in several panes is likely pre-20th century. The parapet above the second floor and some of the façade above the first floor has been rebuilt.

The house entrance, to the right of the shopfront, comprises a six-panel door with a square fanlight above, set between pilasters forming part of the shopfront. The shopfront itself has a central recessed doorway (with a replaced door) and panelled flush-bead stall-risers beneath a chunky sill. The shop windows have glazing bars dividing them into large panes, with a later box-blind above. The frontage is framed by simple pilasters carrying a narrow fascia and cornice.

The original staircase survives from the basement to just below the attic on the third floor. It features an open string with flat scrolled brackets on the stair ends and turned balusters (two per tread) up to the second floor, where the string becomes closed. A hardwood handrail and turned tapering newels complete the structure. Between the first floor and half-landing, the balustrade has been enclosed, though original joinery likely survives within the partition.

The entrance hall contains a semi-circular-headed archway with a panelled soffit resting on panelled pilasters. A moulded dado rail runs through the hall and continues to the first-floor landing. Historic joinery is retained throughout, including architraves, panelled door linings, and four- and six-panel doors to front and back rooms. From the third floor downward, some window reveals are lined and panelled or have shutters painted shut. The principal first-floor room retains full-height window shutters. Several fireplace cupboards survive with two-panel doors, including one with HL hinges. Limited plasterwork cornices remain, though those in the ground-floor shop unit are probably re-run. Early skirting survives but not throughout. The window sashes are a mixture of 18th, 19th, and 20th-century dates. The doorway to the half-landing water closet was created from a stair window with the opening extended downwards and a four-panel door inserted beneath the upper sash; the upper sash and panelled reveals or shutters remain, likely a 19th-century intervention. The water closet is lined in butt-and-bead panelling with a small hatch window.

Twentieth-century joinery is evident on the upper floors, particularly where the front rooms on the second and third floors have been subdivided. The original doors to these front rooms have been lost, though door linings and architraves survive. Within the ground-floor shop rooms, joinery is a mixture of early and later fabric, and the sash window openings have been extended downwards to create two doorways, with upper sashes and panelled reveals or shutters remaining.

All fireplaces have been blocked and their surrounds removed except one in the basement back room, which retains a simple timber surround with a moulded, denticulated mantle-shelf and remnants of early panelling either side. Other early joinery survives in the basement, including a large built-in kitchen dresser of probable 19th-century date with later modifications. The sash windows and door opening onto the now covered-over front area also survive.

The attic has been entirely rebuilt in the mid-20th century as a flat-roofed space with glazed walls to front and back. The rear studio is a single double-height, top-lit space with painted brick walls, incorporating the remains of a brick chimney stack and fireplace openings from the previous two-storey outbuilding.