Numbers 38 To 39 (Consecutive) And Attached Railings

Numbers 38 and 39 are two terraced houses built between 1819 and 1841, with significant rebuilding carried out by Islington Council in 1969. They were constructed by John Wilson for Lord Compton and the Spa Fields Estate. The houses are made of yellow stock brick laid in Flemish bond, featuring a banded stucco ground floor and stucco dressings. The roofs are obscured by a parapet, and the stacks are not visible. Originally, the layout was likely a side-hall entrance plan, but it has been altered to a centre-hall entrance plan.

The buildings are three storeys high with a basement and have five windows each, plus one blind window on the left-hand return wall facing Attneave Street. They are symmetrical and double-fronted. Steps lead up to the entrance, which features a round-arched doorway set in a narrow stucco recess. This doorway has fluted quarter column jambs supporting a corniced head, a patterned fanlight, and a 20th-century panelled door. The ground-floor windows are round-arched sashes with 6/6 curved and radial glazing bars, and there are raised basement sashes below. The upper storeys have gauged-brick flat arches, except for the first-floor sashes.

The first floor has a stucco sill band beneath full-length 6/6 sashes, each with individual cast-iron balconies featuring an anthemion and Vitruvian scroll pattern in the railings. The second floor has 3/3 sashes. There is a projecting stucco cornice and a blocking course, along with a plain brick parapet with stone coping on the left return. The houses are complemented by attached cast-iron railings with floral tops and pineapple finials.

Wilmington Square was developed from the Spa Fields Estate of the Earls of Northampton, with the 9th Earl assigning it to his heir, Lord Compton, in 1817. The construction in Wilmington Square was among the first developments in London after the Waterloo period, with the south terrace being the first and grandest part. Numbers 38 and 39 were not completed until 1841, and due to financial constraints, the square was reduced in depth, leading to its decline as a desirable location.