Numbers 10 To 14 And Attached Railings And Walls (Building Numbers 1/68-72)

This is a terrace of five houses, numbers 10 to 14, built in 1787, originally to provide accommodation for senior officials at the HM Naval Base. A near-contemporary addition is number 10. Later alterations occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries. The building supervisor was Thomas Telford, with contractors Thomas Parlby and Son.

The houses are constructed of red brick in a Flemish bond pattern, with ashlar stone dressings. The roofs are hipped and covered in plain tiles, with brick stacks. They are in a mid-Georgian style. The buildings have a double-depth plan.

The exterior is three storeys high with a basement. Number 10, on the left, is of two bays and features a side porch, while the remaining houses are each of four bays, with a space between them, and central entrances. A step leads to a wooden porch with incised panels, a six-panel door, and a fanlight with decorative and radial glazing bars. The side windows are also 12-pane sashes. Inside these porches, similar doors and fanlights are set within panelled reveals. All windows have segmental brick arches, projecting stone sills, and 12-pane sashes (shorter on the second floor), with six-pane sashes to the basement. A rendered plinth is present, as is an ashlar band at first-floor level and stepped eaves with an ashlar string. The building has a parapet with flat ashlar coping. Party walls rise above the roofline, designed as fire walls. A single-storey bay has been added to the right side, featuring a blind window.

The interior of number 14 retains original features, including wall panelling, dado rails, simple cornices, panelled doors and window reveals, cupboards, and fireplaces throughout. Some fireplaces have decorative surrounds, notably in the principal ground-floor room, which features husk garlands to pilasters, a frieze, mantel, and cherubs in roundels at the corners. The entrance hall has round-arched main entrances with pilasters and fanlights with decorative glazing bars. A closed string open-well staircase has columnar newels and slender column-on-block balusters.

Subsidiary features include basement areas fronted by railings on a stone plinth, with urn finials to the standards and flame finials to the bars. An iron boot-scraper is located to the right of the entrance to number 13. At the rear, two-storey, four-bay wings are linked by high yard walls, approximately 3.5 metres high, each with a board door set below a gauged flat brick arch.

The terrace was originally constructed for senior dockyard officials—the Surgeon, Master Ropemaker, Clerk to Ropeyard, and Boatswain—for whom there was insufficient space in Long Row. The Navy traditionally provided accommodation for Yard officers, and this terrace is an example of a well-composed series of dockyard buildings.