5, Norham Gardens

House, now divided into 5 flats, built in 1865 by architect William Wilkinson.

The building is constructed of red brick in English bond, with stone window dressings, stone strings and corbelled eaves. The roofs are steeply hipped with plain tiles, sprocketted eaves and lead finials. Brick chimneys have offset caps and stone-coped flanks. The fenestration displays Gothic character with colonnettes and carved foliage capitals; ground-floor lights feature shouldered arches, while first-floor lights have pointed arches.

The plan is roughly square, with 2 storeys, semi-basement and attic. The building fronts a garden to the south, with the main entrance in the west side and service entrance to the road on the north. A 2-storey porch extension and steps were added to the west front in 1905 by H. Quinton, along with an early service entry and stair on the north side.

The garden front has 2 bays. The roof is canted forward over a full-height canted bay on the right; the left bay contains a single-storey rectangular bay window with hipped roof. Tall ground-floor windows rise from floor level, with a stone balcony in front running across on shaped stone brackets. A cast iron balustrade with trellis work and open upper panels survives to the front of the canted bay and continues down the steps to the right in front of an early 20th-century conservatory. Basement windows below the balcony have modern UPVC casements. Dormers have steep gables overhanging on brackets, with pierced bargeboards.

The west side has a chimney to the right and a slightly advanced porch in matching style with a Gothic stone archway. This features a plain stone tympanum over a shouldered lintel and a label with carved foliage stops. A similar inner archway is enriched with colonnettes and more carved foliage. Encaustic tiles line the porch floor. The service front facing the road has a distinct hipped roof over a stair bay to the right, with a gablet over the top window. An added lobby with a shallow pointed stone arch and a raking series of cusped roundel lights leads to the service stair above.

The original main stairs retain ringed spindle balusters and cusped roundels to the newels. The interior has otherwise been modified for conversion into flats, with no original fireplaces surviving.

The house was built in 1865 for Robert Pike, an auctioneer. It was one of the earliest houses on the Norham Manor Estate, which developed from around 1860 on land owned by St. John's College. The College controlled development strictly, vetting all designs for quality and ensuring adequate provision of front walls, railings and rear gardens. Norham Gardens was the first road laid out by St. John's as part of the intended suburb, with the south side opening onto the University Parks. The building is of special architectural interest for its domestic Gothic fenestration and door archways, and its distinctive steeply pitched hipped roofs, which suggest a French Gothic character.