Numbers 62 To 66 (Even) And Attached Railings And Garden Gate

Numbers 62 to 66 (even) on Richmond Avenue are a terrace of three attached villas built around 1841. They are constructed from yellow stock bricks arranged in Flemish bond, with a stucco ground floor and dressings. The villas feature a Welsh-slate hipped roof with coupled brackets at the projecting eaves and central brick stacks. The design follows a side-hall entrance plan with a staircase and showcases Greco-Egyptian style details.

Each villa is three storeys tall with a basement and has two windows each. The ground-floor bays are defined by stylised rounded pilasters topped with paterae, and a horizontal row of paterae runs between the pilasters above the entrance and sash windows. Steps lead up to a deeply recessed entrance porch on the left bay (for numbers 64 and 66) and on the right bay (for number 62), which features flanking stone sphinxes and obelisks on a stucco balustrade; however, the sphinxes are missing from number 66 and the obelisks from numbers 64 and 66. The doorway has pilaster jambs supporting a corniced head, an original four-panelled studded door, and a rectangular overlight.

All windows are 6/6 sashes, with ground-floor sashes featuring margin lights. Below the ground-floor sashes are recessed stucco panels, while the upper floors have stylised architraves decorated with paterae. The first floor includes a moulded stucco storey band and cast-iron Neoclassical style window guards with a palmette motif. A linked garden gate attached to number 62 matches the style of the villas but has had its iron guards removed, and there are also attached cast-iron area railings. In 1925, the author Arnold Bennett noted in his diary the remarkable sphinxes and Cleopatra needles in front of these houses.