7-20 Victoria Cottages

Victoria Cottages, numbers 7 to 20 Deal Street, is a development of fourteen terrace houses, built in 1864 for the Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes. It is likely that the design is by Henry Roberts (1803-1876). The terrace was originally divided into two units per house.

The layout consists of roughly rectangular plots with wings extending to the rear, with one dwelling on each floor, initially comprising three rooms and sanitary facilities. The exterior is of stock brick, with red brick surrounds for the doors and windows, and slate roofs. The two-storey houses generally have two-window fronts, with shallow brick arches over the double doors and red brick arches over the ground-floor windows. There are 6/6-pane sash windows. The terrace at 131 to 145 Woodseer Street comprises four double dwellings. Victoria Cottages itself forms an L-shaped row of double dwellings, accessible from a pavement between the rows. A further three double dwellings at 14 to 22 Deal Street are linked to the west side of Victoria Cottages.

The interiors are believed to have been considerably altered. The development was constructed on the site of what had formerly been called Pleasant Row, and was intended to provide accommodation for artisan families. The low-rise, low-density design was criticised at the time but now provides a rare insight into the kind of cottage accommodation once common in the East End. The western end of the southern row was damaged by bombing and is excluded from the listing. The cottages were extensively refurbished in the late 1970s by the Newlon Housing Trust.