20-30, GREEN PARK

Eleven terrace houses on the northwest side of Green Park, built between approximately 1790 and 1805, probably designed by architect John Palmer. The houses show the typical character of Georgian Bath architecture, with a significant break and change in detail between numbers 1–27 and numbers 28–30.

The buildings are constructed of ashlar with slate roofs, though some have pantile or double Roman tiles. Each house is of large double-depth plan with a central valley.

The exterior presents three storeys with attic and basement. Each house has three windows across its façade, all sashes except number 21, set mostly plain. Full-width first-floor balconies appear on numbers 21, 22, 25, 26, 28 and 30, while numbers 24 and 27 have separate balconettes. Each house features two dormers.

Number 20 has been carefully restored, showing twelve-pane sashes over eighteen-pane and twelve-pane arrangements, with a blocked basement window. The panelled door has a square overlight and a balustraded parapet. Number 21 displays four-pane sashes over deep French casements with transom lights, above four-pane sashes, with plain glazing to the basement. The remaining sashes are plain except for twelve-pane glazing to the top floor of number 23, twelve and fifteen-pane sashes to number 25, and twelve-pane sashes at second, ground and basement floors of number 27. Number 28 has twelve-pane glazing to the second floor, and basements of numbers 22, 23 and 24 also have twelve-pane sashes.

All doorways are positioned to the right in deep reveals beneath wide arches. The original panelled doors have narrow side-lights and decorative fanlights. Numbers 28 and 30 have narrower doors without side-lights, and number 30 includes a square transom light beneath the fanlight.

All houses display rusticated ground floors with bold keystones and voussoirs beneath a broad platband serving as a sill to the deep first-floor windows. The centre light of these windows has a narrow architrave with pilasters to consoles and a closed pediment. Numbers 28–30 additionally feature sunk panels to the first-floor windows, with the centre panel arched. A lintel, frieze, cornice and blocking course form the parapet, though the blocking is variously cut down in front of the attic windows. Paired chimney stacks flank the coped party divisions, and coped end gables have a horizontal centre. The return to the left has two paired sashes to the attic with a horizontal parapet, above tripartite sashes at second and first floors, though the outer lights are blind in all cases and small lights have been inserted at the centre. The ground floor features a twentieth-century hipped veranda on single or paired wood columns over French casements with transom lights, and various plain sashes to the basement.

The rear elevation is mainly in coursed rubble with some ashlar work, showing mainly plain sashes staggered for staircases. Flat-roofed extensions have been added to numbers 20, 21, 24 and 26. Most roofs are of slate with dormers, though pantile roofs appear on numbers 23 and 29, and on the upper slopes of numbers 22 and 25.

Interiors are now subdivided, and not all have been fully inspected. Number 20, inspected by Bath Council in 1980, retains intact cornicing with triple arched cupboards either side of a modern fireplace, original stairs and a niche for a stove in the hall. Number 22 has a console fireplace with delicate brackets and good reeded cornices. Number 23 features a similar original cantilevered stone staircase with a replacement handrail and cornices. Number 24 contained in 1985 main stairs with a fine mahogany handrail, a Georgian hob grate with sprays of flowers, and good marble fireplaces on the first floor. Number 25, inspected in 1980, has an early nineteenth-century white marble fireplace with a Victorian grate, a hall with an inner arch featuring elaborate soffits and a fanlight over double doors, and a fine reeded original fireplace with a centre plaque depicting an urn and snakes and side plaques with sheaves of corn. Part of number 26 was recorded by Bath Preservation Trust in the 1990s; although extensively altered, it retains a striking original central rose in the ground-floor front room comprising five petals around five smaller inner petals, and a stone cantilevered staircase with cast iron balusters and a floral insertion every fourth space. Number 27, inspected in 1972, has a very ornate brown marble fireplace with Ionic pilasters to half height flanking standing figures, and fine stone soffits with moulding on the cantilevered staircase. Number 30, recorded by Bath Preservation Trust in 1995, retains substantial original features including cellars beneath the road and a blocked-up well, an arch in the hall with central decoration of ears of corn and twining stems, a small cupboard behind the left-hand split-shutter in the first-floor rear room, and most original ceiling roses with acanthus designs. The kitchen has been completely remodelled.

Each house has railing to the basement area on a slight stone curb with gates to the basement steps, not retained in all cases. Doors are approached over stone-flagged landings carried on quadrant vaults, some with doors beneath. Simple iron overthrows survive on numbers 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 29 and 30.

These houses were built over a considerable period. Numbers 5, 6 and 7 (now demolished) were recorded as "newly erecting" in June 1794 following the bankruptcy of Isaac Fennell, as noted in Bath Council minutes. The building lease for number 27 dates from 29 September 1802, as recorded in Bath Council minutes of 18 February 1869.

Jane Austen lived in number 27 Green Park (then number 3 Green Park Buildings East) from 1804 until March 1805 with her parents and sister Cassandra, after ending the lease of number 4 Sydney Place. Jane had initially dismissed this location during her search for Bath accommodation in 1801. Green Park was the scene of significant sadness for Jane: her father George Austen died in January 1805, shortly after the death of her close friend Mrs Lefroy on 16 December 1804, which was Jane's twenty-ninth birthday. From this house Jane wrote to her brother Frank informing him of their father's death. Following this loss, the income of the Austen ladies was immediately reduced, forcing them to move to cheaper accommodation at number 25 Gay Street, Bath.

Numbers 1–19 were demolished following severe bomb damage in 1942.