Numbers 17 And 18 And Attached Railings And Piers

Numbers 17 and 18 are semi-detached houses located on Montpelier Villas in Brighton, built around 1845. They are constructed of stucco with a slate roof and feature two storeys above a raised basement. The houses have a two-window range facing Montpelier Villas and a three-window range on the return side. Each house is wider at the back, with the entrance positioned in the resulting angle, and the front and back sections have separate roofs.

The front of the houses showcases banded rustication on the ground floor and long and short quoins on the first floor. There is a flat-arched entrance flanked by pilasters and consoles that support a first-floor balcony with a scalloped balustrade. The entrance also features an overlight. The street front includes a segmental bay at the basement and ground floor, with flat-arched triple windows that culminate in a shallow dome above the storey band. The basement windows have original 6/6 sash designs, and there is a bracketed balcony with cast-iron railings and a fringed canopy over the ground-floor windows. The first-floor windows are flat-arched with margin lights, while the westernmost first-floor window on the return side is blank.

At the back, there is a full-height segmental bay with tripartite windows and original 6/6 sashes in the basement of No. 18, along with margin lights on the first floor. The eaves are supported by console brackets and feature paterae in the frieze. The roof is hipped with stacks at both the front and back parts.

The interior has not been inspected. The entrance steps and front gardens are adorned with cast-iron railings, which include brackets, and there are square, stuccoed, corniced piers between each pair of houses in Montpelier Villas. The 20 houses that comprise Montpelier Villas share a uniform design, making such semi-detached houses a rare find in Brighton. The railings were listed separately on August 20, 1971.