5-11, Ranston Street

5-11 Ranston Street are model cottages built around 1895 by architect Elijah Hoole for Octavia Hill, who still owns them through the Octavia Housing Trust. The cottages are constructed of red brick, mostly rendered on the first floor, with hung clay tiles between the floors. They feature wooden sash windows and plank doors, and have tiled pitched and gabled roofs with brick chimneys located in the valleys.

The cottages, named 'St. Botolph Cottages 1895' on a plaque at No. 8, are two storeys high and include a gabled dormer in the attic with a single central light. Each cottage is separated by a short brick party wall, with alternating taller brick chimneys behind. The first floor has a group of three short sash windows at the center, above a tile-hung band, while the ground floor features a taller group of three sashes offset by a side plank door with an overlight.

Each house has a small individual front yard enclosed by iron railings. Ranston Street is paved with granite sets and lined with large cut granite curbs.

These houses replaced the infamous 'Marylebone fever dens' that once occupied the area known as Charles Street, which was renamed in the late 1890s, possibly by Octavia Hill. The cottages reflect the picturesque style preferred by Hill and Hoole. They hold group value with Nos. 21-26, 27-31, and 32-37 on the west side of Ranston Street and are recognized as complete examples of attractive late 19th-century model cottages built for the important housing reformer Octavia Hill.