Numbers 68 To 72 (Even) And Attached Railings And Garden Gate

Numbers 68 to 72 (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 has three storeys and a basement, with two windows on each floor. The ground-floor bays are highlighted 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 for the right bays (numbers 68 and 70) and the left bay (number 72), which is flanked by stone sphinxes and obelisks on stucco balustrades, although the sphinxes are missing from number 70. The doorways feature pilaster jambs supporting a corniced head, with original four-panelled studded doors and rectangular overlights.

The villas have 6/6 sash windows throughout, with ground-floor sashes including margin lights. Below the ground-floor sashes are recessed stucco panels, while the upper floors have stylised architraved sashes adorned with paterae. The first floor includes a moulded stucco storey band and cast-iron Neoclassical style window guards with a palmette motif. There is a linked garden gate attached to number 72, designed in the same style but without iron guards, and all houses are surrounded by cast-iron area railings. In 1925, the writer Arnold Bennett noted the impressive sphinxes and obelisks in front of these villas in his diary after visiting Barnsbury.