2, Albemarle Way

ISLINGTON

TQ3182SE ALBEMARLE WAY 635-1/74/4 (North side) 29/09/72 No.2

GV II

Terraced house. c.1731-9, refronted c.1860. Yellow brick set in Flemish bond with red brick dressings, stucco, roof obscured by parapet. Four storeys, one-window range. Ground floor decorated with rusticated stucco, parts of which are rough-faced; flat-arched entrance with replacement doorcase and overlight, broad flat-arched window. First-floor window flat-arched and tripartite, with metal colonettes, a head of gauged red brick and red brick dressings to sides. Second- and third-floor windows tripartite under segmental arches, also with heads of gauged red brick and red brick dressings to sides. Stucco sill band between second and third floor, and to parapet. INTERIOR: Fine, with door and window-architraves, fielded panelling and corner fireplaces in the back rooms throughout. Panelled entrance hall with a round arch with fluted Doric pilasters and panelled soffit leading to the staircase which has a wreathed and ramped handrail, intricately decorated open string, fluted principal balusters, and remaining balusters of column-on-vase form with iron-twist ornament, as far as the second floor; panelled dado to staircase throughout; stone cantilevered staircase, underside of the return flight between ground and first floors decoratively moulded. Ground-floor rooms now thrown into one, panelled, with moulded cornice to front part and dentil cornice to back; simple wooden fireplace with keystone and fine cast-iron grate to front part. In the first-floor front room the panelling stops a metre short of the front of the building, and the panelling has mouldings enriched with egg-and-dart ornament; fine wooden chimneypiece with superimposed pilasters to fireplace surround and elaborately panelled overmantel, the pediment decorated with acanthus ornament - this overmantel taken from a slightly earlier structure of c.1700; cast-iron grate; cornice to panelling, frieze, and dentil and modillion ceiling cornices. The entrances to the staircase and back room have fine elaborate eared architraves, overdoors with pulvinated frieze enriched with bay leaf ornament and open pediment, and fine panelled doors; this pair of architraves also from another building, they are in the manner of William Kent and very likely date to c.1765. First-floor back room panelled with cornice, frieze and modillion cornice; eared fireplace surround, now blocked. In the second-floor front room the panelling stops a metre short of the front of the building; moulded cornice, wooden panelled fireplace surround with fluted keystone and cast-iron grate in the Adam style, with delicate ornament; second-floor back room panelled with moulded cornice. 2 Albemarle Way was the home of James and Henry Carr, architects, from 1800 to 1824. It is likely that the c.1700 chimneypiece and c.1765 doorcases were installed by the Carrs.

Listing NGR: TQ3170982136