Esplanade House Terrace

Esplanade House Terrace is a circa 1840 terrace of four houses, designed as a unified composition, located on The Strand. The houses are three storeys high with a basement and attic, and are faced with stucco. The ground floors are rusticated, with bands marking the storeys and a decorative frieze. Numbers 17 and 20 project forward, with pilasters accentuating their first and second floors. Numbers 18 and 19 have a mansard slate roof largely hidden behind a panelled parapet and cornice. Attic windows are visible on numbers 17 and 20, breaking through the eaves, while numbers 18 and 19 have a panel of turned balusters set into the parapet in front of their attic windows. There are blind windows at the centre of the terrace's composition. Each house originally had two recessed sash windows with intact glazing bars and block sills, although the ground floor windows are rounded headed. A later stuccoed canted bay of three windows was added to number 20, encompassing the basement and ground floor. Numbers 17 and 20 have side entrance bays, flat-roofed with a parapet; number 17 has a single storey entrance, and number 20 is two storeys high. A modern door has been inserted into number 17, but it retains a semi-circular fanlight. The door to number 20 is set back within a porch flanked by pilasters and a moulded arch, with a recessed panelled door and rectangular fanlight above. Numbers 18 and 19 have projecting rectangular entrance bays, likely added later and stuccoed with banded rustication, a course, and a parapet. These bays feature recessed panelled doors with semi-circular fanlights, as well as round-headed recessed side windows. The entrance bay on number 19 rises to the second floor with two windows. Each door is approached by a flight of steps with rendered parapets and capped piers. The North Esplanade front follows a similar design but with variations in the window arrangement. Numbers 18 and 19 have two attic windows on this side, each with a balustraded panel in front. The second floor of numbers 17 and 20 features two narrow round-headed windows. The first floor has large four-light casements, a French window in the centre set within an architrave, and pediments supported by brackets. Number 17 has a well-preserved anthemion-cast iron balcony. The first-floor windows of numbers 18 and 19 are round-headed, recessed sash windows with block sills, giving onto a shared anthemion and intruvian scroll balcony on brackets. The ground floor of number 20 has a three-window bay, matching the Strand front, with a Victorian ornate cast iron balcony and steps with a balustrade leading down to the garden. Number 17 has a late 19th-century rectangular bay of three lights to the front, alongside two smaller windows to the side. The basement projects in front of the bay, and numbers 18 and 19 have French windows on the ground floor. The terrace features a fine iron balcony with lattice and scrollwork within oval panels, which also flanks the steps leading down from each house to the garden. Numbers 1 to 7 and 9 to 20 form a group.