20 And 21, Bathwick Hill

A pair of houses on Bathwick Hill, dating to around 1819, with additions made in the early 20th century. They were originally designed as a symmetrical pair. The construction is of limestone ashlar with double-pitched slate mansard roofs, featuring moulded stacks to the party wall and returns. The houses have double depth plans with entrances in the side ranges.

The exterior presents two storeys with attics and lower ground floors, with a four-window wide central block. A coped parapet is present, with a plinth; half-balusters flank two open panels originally fronting dormers (half balustrades remain on the sides of the panels). A cornice, frieze and ground floor platband are also visible. The windows are mostly eight/eight pane sashes, some with crown glass. Each house has a six/six pane sash stair window cutting through the ends of the platband. The rear elevation is more symmetrical, featuring six/six pane sash windows in the attic and horned eight/eight pane sashes elsewhere; blind windows are present on the party wall.

No. 20 incorporates a circa 1900 Jacobean Revival two-storey gabled block, filling the angle of the set-back rear range. This block has paired leaded windows with semi-elliptical headed lights above the doorcase, surmounted by a semicircular pediment featuring strapwork and an oval cartouche in the tympanum, above a triglyph frieze. The lower moulding extends as a dripmould over paired leaded windows to each side. The door is decorated with a heavy egg-and-dart moulding. No. 21 has a set-back entrance bay with altered ashlar-faced upper storeys.

The ground floor front room of No. 21 contains a white marble fireplace with reeded jambs and lintel and roundels to the corner blocks. The hall has a late 19th century black and white tile floor.

These houses were part of the development of Bathwick Hill on the Bathwick Estate, with John Pinch the Elder being involved in overseeing the buildings and potentially contributing to the design. The land was assigned by the Earl of Darlington in 1819, and the houses originally comprised Bellevue Place; the name is faintly visible, painted on the platband, alongside "No. 2¿ on the left end of the main block of the present No. 21. A two-storey extension in the Jacobean style was added to No. 20 in 1897 by Silcock & Reay.