Wycliffe Buildings

Wycliffe Buildings is a block of flats, constructed in 1894 by H. Thackery-Turner in an Arts and Crafts style. The building occupies an island site and its main facade faces Portsmouth Road. It is built of coursed sandstone blocks, some snecked, with hipped and gabled plain-tiled roofs, and features an unusual wedge-shaped plan due to the sloping ground to the left. The building is two storeys high with attics, and has increasingly tall plinths on the left side to accommodate the ground slope. Deep eaves incorporate decorative scrolled supports to the drainpipes and gutters, and gabled dormers break through the eaves, some hidden behind the gutters. Brick stacks, with corbelled tops, rise from the ridges of the roofs on the left, to the left of centre, and two to the right.

The complex elevation presents a very irregular fenestration pattern across three main ranges and a tower to the right end. The gabled projecting range to the left end features a narrow casement window on each floor, with a two-panel door below. This gable is flanked by 3-light dormers and a mullioned and transomed casement window on the first floor, with paired, cambered-head glazing-bar sash windows on the ground floor. A hipped roof range to the left of centre has two gabled 4-light dormers and a single under-eaves 3-light casement window. Three windows on the first floor incorporate a central 3-light casement flanked by 4-light outer casements; paired glazing-bar sash windows are on the ground floor, with a between-floors casement to the left, overlooking a deep, 4-centre arched porch recess containing two 6-panel doors, one part-glazed, beneath a barrel vault. Original iron screen gates are present across the front. The right-hand range has a narrow casement window on each floor and a two-panel door below. Above are two 3-light dormers over two 3-light and one 4-light casements on the first floor, with paired cambered-head glazing-bar sashes below. The roof steps up towards the right, with a gabled buttress in front of the tower. The tower, situated at the junction of Portsmouth Road and Bury Street, has a pyramidal roof and ground floor casements on all three sides. The right-hand return front facing Bury Street displays a descending roofline in three steps, with two dormers in each section. The left section has 4-light windows over two ground floor sashes; the central and right sections feature 3-light windows above paired ground floor sashes. An end block to the right steps up under a full dormer and incorporates an 8-light mullioned and transomed window on the first floor. The rear elevation includes a central square bay with a parapet and central stack, and a gabled wing with close-set casement fenestration.

Inside, original door fittings and stair hand-rails, in a flowing Art Nouveau style, remain at numbers 7 to 9.