51, Charles Street

51 Charles Street is a house built in the mid-18th century, with alterations made in the late 19th century. It features red-brown brick, buff stock brick, stone, and stucco dressings, topped with a slate mansard roof. The building has four storeys, including attics and a basement, and is three bays wide with the entrance located on the left side.

The ground floor is rusticated, with a door consisting of six fielded panels set within a reeded architrave, complete with glazed margins and an overlight, and a continuous canopy supported by scrolled brackets. There are two sash windows on this level. On the first floor, three tall French windows are positioned under segmental pediments supported by brackets, adorned with swagged garlands and a roundel in between. A cast iron balcony is present here. The second floor features three sash windows in eared architraves, each with a panelled apron and a continuous cill band. The upper storeys are finished in buff stock brick, with a rendered storey band and three additional sashes with eared architraves, some of which have vertical bars, along with a continuous cill band. The frieze displays alternating hemispheres and vertical bars, topped with a moulded cornice. A tripartite full dormer with a shaped head sits below the gablet, flanked by brackets. The party wall has stacks.

At the rear, there is a four-storey canted bay and an apsidal stair bay, with cast iron balconies on the first-floor windows. Inside, the house features an open string stair with chinoiserie tread ends and a timber balustrade, along with a 19th-century newel at the ground floor and paired newels at the first floor. Above the second floor, there is an 18th-century closed string turned baluster stair, while the attic stair is from the 19th century and later. The plasterwork includes 18th-century friezes and cornices, some modified in the 19th century, with a heavy mutule cornice in the hall. The ground floor has a marble chimneypiece with a palm frond panel, and the first floor features a pair of mid-19th-century marble fireplaces with semicircular arched openings. The doors throughout are of four panels. This property is part of the Berkeley estate, which was developed from 1740 to the mid-1750s, including the layout of Charles Street.