NUMBERS 34-38, 38A AND 38B, 39-41 AND ATTACHED RAILINGS

Ten terraced houses on the north-west side of Granville Square, Islington. The square was planned in 1828 by John Booth and his son John, surveyors for the Lloyd Baker Estate. Numbers 34-38B and 39-41 were built between 1841 and 1843 by William Joseph Booth, another son and an architect. Numbers 27-38B were rebuilt in 1864 by the Metropolitan Railway following subsidence caused by the railway construction beneath the square. The buildings were essentially dismantled and reconstructed around 1980 by Islington Council and converted to flats.

The houses are constructed of yellow stock brick set in Flemish bond with banded stucco to the ground floor of numbers 39-41, stucco lined as ashlar to numbers 34-38B, and stucco dressings throughout. Roofs are obscured, with party-wall brick stacks. The buildings follow a side-hall entrance plan, with number 41 featuring a stucco side entrance with flanking pilasters carrying an entablature in right return in Granville Street.

The three storeys with basement are arranged symmetrically in groups of six, with centre and end houses breaking forward. Numbers 39-41 have 2 windows each and a 1-window range to Granville Street elevation. Steps rise to entrances with doorways featuring panelled pilaster jambs carrying corniced heads, patterned or plain rectangular overlights, and original panelled doors to numbers 34 and 39; others have 20th-century panelled doors. Doors to numbers 35-38 are paired and share a common console bracket.

Windows include 6/6 and 8/8 sashes to numbers 39-41, with ground-floor windows having margin lights; upper floors are architraved with 1st-floor stucco sill bands to full-length sashes with cornices and individual balconies with cast-iron railings. Numbers 34-38B have tripartite pilastered ground-floor sashes with keystones and 1st-floor cast-iron window guards except to numbers 38-38A. The upper floors of numbers 27-33 are predominantly 2/2 sashes, some with iron window guards and sill brackets, all with stucco sill bands. Numbers 39-41 have plain stucco bands beneath the cornice and blocking course; numbers 34-38B have brick string courses and plain brick parapets, some with iron tie rods. The plain brick left-hand return wall of number 34 forms the side wall to Riceyman Steps. Attached cast-iron railings feature tasselled spearhead finials.

Granville Square was the final portion of the Lloyd Baker Estate to be built, formerly functioning as a builders' rubbish tip. Originally called Sharp Square in honour of Thomas Lloyd Baker's wife, a niece of William Granville Sharp, Esq, of Fulham, it was later renamed Granville Square. St. Philip's church, designed by Edward Buckton Lamb and built in 1831-1833 in the centre of the square, was demolished in 1938. The square is the only street in the Lloyd Baker Estate built in conventional terrace style and is notably squeezed into a restricted space between Wharton and Lloyd Baker Streets. Entrances to the square are at north and south via Granville Street and from the west connected to King's Cross Road by a flight of granite steps known as Plum Pudding Steps or Riceyman Steps.