61 Monmouth Street

61 Monmouth Street is a terraced house, now converted to shop and offices, originally built in 1699 by S Chase. It underwent early 19th-century alterations, then was restored and substantially remodelled between 1983 and 1985 by the Terry Farrell Partnership as part of the regeneration of Comyn Ching Triangle.

The front elevation is constructed in red-brown brick with red brick dressings. The rear is also red-brown brick, laid in Flemish bond, and features stone paving, masonry parapet walls with steel rails, and a timber and masonry porch. The new work uses traditional materials in a forward-thinking manner, with the bold rear entrance painted in turquoise blue, black, and deep red, creating a unifying identity and new vitality to the scheme while complementing the existing palette.

The building is organised as a two-storey terraced house with an attic and basement, arranged in two bays with the entrance to the left. The upper floors now serve as offices and are accessed via a rear entrance at No 5. The building is partially inter-connected with No 63 Monmouth Street.

The ground floor features a shop front designed by Farrell, comprising five vertical lights with slender glazing bars, a concave stall riser on brackets, a renewed doorcase and part-glazed door with a Farrell number plate above. The upper floors retain the late 17th-century brick facade, marked by plain plat bands above each storey. First and second floor windows are six-over-six pane sashes with heavy glazing bars in late 17th and 18th-century manner, set in near flush frames within exposed boxes beneath flat gauged brick arches. To the right is a narrow blind recessed panel. The parapet has been rebuilt in stock brick with a set-back four-light flat-roofed dormer, and a brick ridge stack rises to the right.

The rear elevations enclose Ching Court, which slopes from north to south. The basement areas are clad in masonry behind a shallow moulded masonry plinth with tubular steel balustrade, featuring Farrell's signature reversed CC insignia.

The rear of No 61 is constructed in red-brown and stock brick, rising three and a half storeys plus basement with a gabled parapet. The ground floor is dominated by Farrell's monumental porch, one of three serving the upper-floor offices on this side of the court. This is a bold reinterpretation of a baroque 18th-century doorcase, almost Mannerist in concept, with a flat roof and timber casing painted turquoise blue, the outer canopy face picked out in deep red. The porch is reached by a shallow flight of semi-circular masonry steps—two steps in this case—with an inset polished circular panel in the upper step, a masonry threshold between flared parapet walls of unequal height. The entrance is recessed behind square-section openings above a canopy with a central convex moulding, also picked out in deep red, which responds to the concave cornice above. The door has four square glazed lights above flush moulded panels, centred with a door knob and letter box set low beneath. The returns have simple recessed panels beneath a shallow cornice, each with a recessed fixed panel resembling a door or window, containing four square glazed lights above flush panels.

The ground floor window is a six-over-six pane sash with very slender glazing bars, painted black, beneath a flat gauged brick arch and fitted with Farrell's window guard. The upper floor windows have shallow segmental or cambered arches; the first and second floors have similar six-over-six panes, with a taller stairwell window above and three-over-six panes at the top storey.

The interior features a rear stairwell with a pine closed-string stair, amalgamated from the remains of original staircases. It has square newels, square-section moulded rail, and turned balusters. The stairwell displays restored and recreated three-quarter height panelling and doorcases with robust Farrell architraves and flying cornices—a Mannerist, postmodern interpretation of an 18th-century decorative scheme, where the stair cuts across the stairwell window. The original roof trusses are said to be exposed.