6-24 Ralph Allen Cottages and 1 Priory Cottages

Eleven terrace houses on Prior Park Road, including Priory Cottage. Built between 1728 and 1740 by John Wood the Elder for Ralph Allen, and restored in 1983.

The buildings are constructed of limestone ashlar with pantile roofs. The cottages are arranged in pairs, each with a single-depth plan featuring shared party-wall stacks and broad plain areas of walling between grouped windows. Access is via lobby entries, with fireplaces set within rear walls and winder stairs placed within the wide party walls.

The main terrace consists of three storeys, each pair of cottages featuring two windows per floor. All windows are glazing bar sashes in slightly recessed surrounds, splayed to the first and second floors of No. 18, with six-, twelve- and twelve-pane configurations. Centred to each pair is a six-panel door with a generally glazed top panel, positioned beneath a heavy slab hood supported on three consoles—the central one wider—with the hood continuing as a platband on the bed mould. Each pair has a flat dividing pilaster rising from first floor level upwards, and a two-stage ashlar stack on the coped party division. Cross-gabled saddles sit above intermediate party divisions, and a continuous moulded stone eaves cornice runs across the frontage.

The doorway to former No. 24 is blocked. No. 24, Priory Cottage, comprises a further unit set gable-end to the street. This section is built in ashlar with slate to the front roof slope and coped gables, rising three storeys, and features twelve-pane sashes at attic and first-floor levels, with a nine-pane sash and six-panel door at ground floor.

The main front, facing south, is composed of three bays with twelve-pane sashes and balconettes at first-floor level above sixteen-pane sashes, and a central four-panel door with transom light. Four narrow panelled pilasters are set in from the corners, and a moulded eaves cornice with blocking course and ball finials above the pilasters runs the width of the frontage. A stack sits to the left, and at the rear eaves there is a stack with two lights and a door at lower-ground level. The rear of the main range is built in coursed rubble, with each house having two small rooflights above stepped plain sashes with centred small lights at two levels, above glazed doors.

These cottages, together with the quarrymen's houses at Church Road, Combe Down, represent very early examples of dedicated industrial housing. They are of considerable interest as part of Ralph Allen's extensive quarrying business and were built—like Prior Park itself—to demonstrate the capabilities of Bath stone. Wood's design applied Palladian architectural principles to workers' housing, an unexplored realm at the time, and the cottages marked the western approaches to Allen's domain. They stood close to the wharf from which Allen shipped stone, brought down from the quarries by rail on the line of the current Ralph Allen Drive. The cottages thus formed part of an exceptional industrial landscape and are of very considerable significance within Ralph Allen's working landscape, as well as being early industrial houses of unusual architectural interest.

In the 1970s the cottages were threatened by a road-widening scheme, and the County of Avon applied for demolition in 1979, but the buildings were subsequently reprieved. Extensive refurbishment was carried out by architects David Brain and Stollar and Mountford Construction Co Ltd. A plaque on No. 6 records: "Ralph Allen's Cottages. Built by Ralph Allen to house his stonemasons, who worked nearby. Erected c1740. Restored 1983". A second bronze plaque records an Environmental Award from the Bath Conservation Area Committee in 1985. No. 4 has been completely rebuilt in facsimile.