9, Ballast Quay SE10

9 Ballast Quay is an early 19th-century terraced house that has had its front rebuilt to reflect the original design. The building stands three storeys tall with two window bays and is constructed of stock brick with a parapet. The facade features a wide, gently rounded bow on the right side and a single blocked bay on the left. The bow extends the full height of the building and includes sash windows with glazing bars, with the first floor featuring a three-light window. The left side has a narrow bay with two blocked windows and a blocked door. Although much of the brickwork is from a 20th-century rebuilding, the elegant wide flat window arches made of gauged brick appear to be original.

On the return elevation, some original brickwork remains at the ground floor, including a door with a reeded cornice head and a radial fanlight under a rounded arch, along with a replaced sash window on the first and second floors beneath modern cambered arched heads. The house extends to include the top (third) storey of No 10, which has a single two-light casement window with glazing bars.

The houses on Ballast Quay represent the earliest development in the area during the first half of the 19th century, as shown on Wyld's map of 1827. Further development occurred in the adjoining streets during the 1840s and 1850s under William Coles Child, who led a prominent coal-importation business. Ballast Quay, originally called Union Quay, was renamed because it served as a point where ships with discharged cargoes were loaded with local gravel. The street is also notable for the rare survival of 1860s granite setts street-paving, laid by Coles Child to facilitate coal delivery from the Greenwich waterfront.

No 9 Ballast Quay has significant group value with other early 19th-century listed houses on Ballast Quay and is adjacent to an important historic street surface.