18-20, WIMPOLE STREET W1

These are two terraced town houses, numbers 18 and 20 Wimpole Street, built in the 1760s as part of the Portland Estate development. They were refaced in the 1840s and 1850s. The facades are of stock brick with channelled stucco to the ground floors, alternating vermiculated bands at numbers 18 and 19. Stucco dressings are present throughout, and the roofs are slate-covered. The houses are four storeys high, with number 20 having a dormered mansard roof, all set above basements. Each house has a three-window front.

Numbers 19 and 20 have semicircular arched doorways with vermiculated dressings and voussoirs to number 19, while number 18 has a square-headed doorway with a Doric columned and balustraded stucco porch. The doors are panelled, with number 19 featuring side lights and a patterned fanlight, and number 18 having a side light and a rectangular fanlight. The recessed sash windows are set within architraves, eared on the second and third floors. The first-floor windows have pulvinated friezes and cornices, supported by consoles, with the central windows pedimented. A plat band sits above the ground floor, and a crowning cornice with a blocking course tops the facades. Numbers 18 and 19 share a continuous stucco balcony supported by bold, pendant-ornamented brackets with low balustrading, which runs out over the porch of number 18. Number 20 has an iron balustraded balcony on brackets. Number 18 has spike finialed area railings, while numbers 19 and 20 have wrought iron area railings with flambé urn finials.

The interiors retain stone staircases with scrolled wrought iron balustrades, along with some original plasterwork and chimney pieces. Building details convey group value.