No 7 Denmark Street

MATERIALS: No 7 is of red brick construction with stucco to the ground floor. Windows and doors are timber. PLAN: it is a three-bay, three-storey terraced house with attic and basement. The pitched roofs, with dormer windows to the front, are masked by a later brick parapet. The original late-C17 floor plan survives intact above the ground floor. This comprises a front and back room on each floor, heated by side-wall stacks (the fireplaces in the back rooms being set across the back corner). A dog-leg stair is set against the opposing side wall. There is a closet wing to the rear of the building and several single-storey accretions of probable C20 date.

EXTERIOR: the upper two storeys have ranges of three six-over-six pane sash windows with exposed sash boxes (two of the windows have lost most of their glazing bars). The windows have splayed flat brick arches with painted central keystones; there is a string course above the first-floor windows. Unlike elsewhere on the street where the ground floor arrangement of a door and two windows has been replaced with a shopfront, at No 7, and its neighbour No 6, the original arrangement survives, albeit with the brickwork rendered and the window openings extended downwards, in the case of No 7, to form half-glazed pairs of French windows. The original door-case survives, with carved console brackets supporting a projecting pediment; above the six-panel door there is a large rectangular fanlight.

INTERIOR: the ground floor rooms have been opened up to one another, and original features have been lost. Elsewhere in the building however, including the ground floor hall, there is a substantially complete late C17 interior, with some C18, and C19, alterations. Box cornices survive widely and wall panelling is reflective of the house's relative hierarchy; from bolection moulded panelling in some of the principal rooms, to simple timber boarding in the basement and attic. The first floor room to the front has a particularly complete panelled interior with heavy bolection mouldings. Some panelling also survives in the closet wing. The basement stair has a simple square newel and stick balusters, but from the ground floor up the stair has a moulded closed string with barley-twist balusters, and with the exception of some missing balusters, survives throughout the building. Principal rooms have panelled window-shutters, and fireplaces of various dates survive above ground floor; several appearing to have remnants of their original timber surrounds.

OUTBUILDING: the outbuilding to the rear of No 7 faces onto a small courtyard, where there are several adhoc extensions. The outbuilding is of brick construction, single storey, with part-pitched, part-flat roof. The front wall is partially built-against. Internally the walls are bare brick, with a chimney stack against the back wall. A large pitched skylight is indicative of its workshop use.