1-9, Sion Hill Place

Nine terrace houses formerly symmetrical, built 1817-1820 and designed by John Pinch the Elder. The terrace includes twentieth-century additions. The site was formerly known as Lower Crannells, and William Hayes, a Bath painter, took out a building lease in 1809 with John Pinch serving as architect. Daniel Aust, builder of Walcot, was responsible for construction of No.5 and possibly others.

The houses are built in limestone ashlar with moulded chimney stacks, some carrying hand-thrown chimney pots to party walls. The terrace comprises four storeys including an attic storey and basement. Each house has two bays except No.5 at the centre (beneath a pediment) and the terminal houses Nos.1 and 9 (with three bays each), all featuring full-height segmental bay windows projecting forward. The terrace presents a continuous coped parapet, cornice and frieze over three or six-pane attic windows. The second floor has a cornice with Vitruvian scroll frieze and sill band to six-pane-over-six-pane sash windows. Six-pane-over-nine-pane sash windows appear on the second storey with delicate cast iron balconies carried on consoles at first floor level of each house. Ground floor windows are six-pane-over-six-pane sashes. The ground floor features a platband and banded rustication with incised voussoirs, with semicircular arches to cobweb fanlights over reeded lintels and plain panels to door centres. The six-panel doors have inverted corners to the upper panels.

Originally the terminal houses had entrances in the returns, now reconfigured as three-storey double-depth set-back wings. No.1 was considerably enlarged to the left and connected with Summerhill in the 1930s. Its set-back wing continues the terrace character and has a doorcase with engaged Tuscan columns supporting a triglyph frieze and blocking course over a wide segmental fanlight with leaded glazing and small hexagonal pane margin lights flanking the door. The first-floor balcony of the bowed right range, originally the terrace terminal, curves to fit the bow. Nos.2-5 have doors to the left. No.5 at the centre features sunblind boxes to the attic storey and sliding louvred shutters to first and ground floors. Nos.6-9 have doors to the right. The bow to the left of No.9 (Consulat de Monaco) mirrors that of No.1. A two-window right wing, probably circa 1930 and similar to No.1's, reflects terrace details and is set well back with an enclosed porch in the angle. It features engaged Roman Doric columns supporting a triglyph frieze with central swag, cornice and blocking course, with paterae to spandrels of a wide segmental arched fanlight with leaded cobweb glazing and small hexagonal pane margin lights flanking a twentieth-century door.

Interior details documented by 1947 National Monuments Record photographs and a Bath Preservation Trust survey include a fine plaster ceiling in the dining room of No.5 with ceiling rose within a lozenge and delicate cornice, and another ceiling to the ground floor front room with palm frond and rosette decoration to the outer edge. No.5 contains fine marble chimneypieces, plasterwork, a hall with decorated soffit and glazed panel over the inner door, and a stone cantilevered staircase. No.1 was remodelled internally for Ernest Cook during the 1930s by the local building firm Axford & Smith, who inserted a new staircase, doors and metal grilles from a London town house formerly the residence of the Princess Royal. Additional doors with surrounds and flooring came from Chesterfield House. The remodelling included the basement and attic, with main rooms refitted with reproduction chimneypieces.

The terrace is regarded as one of the finest and latest palace-fronted terraces in Bath, and by some authorities as Pinch's finest terrace work. Its remote location and elaborate screen of gates and railings on Sion Hill created a prestigious and extremely secluded development positioned to take full advantage of the westward prospect. It remains the northernmost of Bath's urban set-pieces.