Numbers 15 And 16 And Attached Railings And Piers

Numbers 15 and 16, with their attached railings and piers, are a pair of semi-detached houses dating from around 1845. They are located within Montpelier Villas in Brighton and were initially part of a larger listing encompassing numbers 11 to 20, later separated. The houses are built of stucco with slate roofing.

The overall plan features two storeys over a raised basement. The front elevation facing Montpelier Villas has a two-window arrangement, while the return elevation has a three-window arrangement. Each house is wider towards the rear, with the main entrance situated in the resulting angled space, and the front and rear portions each have separate rooflines.

The front of the houses exhibits banded rustication on the ground floor and long and short quoins on the first floor. A flat-arched entrance incorporates pilasters, consoles supporting a first-floor balcony with a scalloped balustrade, and an overlight. A segmental bay extends across the basement and ground floor street front, featuring flat-arched triple windows and culminating in a shallow dome. Basement windows have 6/6 sash windows, original to Number 15. Bracketed balconies support cast-iron railings and fringed canopies over the ground-floor windows (the fringe is missing from Number 16). First-floor windows have flat arches with margin lights; the westernmost first-floor window on the return elevation is blank. The rear section includes a full-height segmental bay with tripartite windows and 6/6 sash windows of original design to the basement. The eaves are supported by console brackets with paterae in the frieze, and the roof is hipped with stacks serving both the front and back parts.

The interior of the houses has not been inspected. Cast-iron railings are present to the entrance steps and front gardens, with brackets. A square, stuccoed, corniced pier is positioned between each pair of houses along Montpelier Villas. The twenty houses comprising Montpelier Villas share a consistent design, making such semi-detached houses uncommon in Brighton. The railings were specifically listed on August 20, 1971.