Somersetshire Buildings

Somersetshire Buildings, Milsom Street (East side), Nos. 37–42

An elaborate symmetrical terrace of five former houses, now in commercial use, built between 1781 and 1783 by Thomas Baldwin. The building is constructed in limestone ashlar with double-pitched slate mansard roofs with moulded stacks, mostly without pots to coped party walls.

The terrace comprises three storeys with attics. The composition consists of two three-window houses on each side of the centre, flanking a central five-window house. The terminal pavilions and central house step forward prominently. All sections are unified by an entablature with modillion and dentil cornice and lion masks to the frieze, returned at the ends of each pavilion and also spanning the intermediate houses. The pavilions have triangular pediments supported by a giant order of four fluted Corinthian engaged columns resting on a rusticated ground floor. The central house is articulated by six similar columns. Between the pavilions, the entablature carries a balustraded parapet articulated by plain piers and following the contour of the façade.

The second floor features three/six-pane sash windows with continuous moulded sill courses interrupted by columns. The first floor has six/six-pane sash windows with similar but thicker continuous moulded sill courses that form coping to blind balustraded aprons. The first floor windows to the centre of each house and three windows to the bow of the central house have shouldered moulded architraves with foliate friezes, cornices and friezes decorated with wheat ear festoons and rams' heads.

The ground floor is rusticated and breaks forward to provide a moulded base for the grand order, forming virtually an arcade of semicircular arched windows and doors with radial voussoirs and moulded impost band. The fanlights and ground floor windows have radial glazing bars.

Originally the houses had three/six-pane sash windows to the second floor and six/six-pane sashes below. The individual buildings have undergone various modifications for commercial purposes:

No. 37 (Barclays Bank) to the left has twentieth-century double doors to the right.

No. 38 (Trustee Savings Bank), set back to the left-of-centre, has nineteenth-century horned two/two-pane sash windows to the second floor, plate glass sash windows to the first floor, and six/six-pane sash windows flanked by two doors with fanlights.

Nos. 38 and 39 (National Westminster Bank) occupy the centre of the group and have panelled aprons to ground floor windows. To the left are circa 1840 double three-panel doors with shallow pyramidal panels and studs to the frame, with a similar panel below the fanlight. This part of the building functioned as Bath and Somersetshire Bank from circa 1783 to 1793 when it failed, then became Stuckey's Bank from 1859 until its takeover by Westminster Bank and later National Westminster Bank. The ceiling of the banking hall features a fine Neo-classical design in the Adam manner. The house currently comprises two numbers and was at some stage two separate properties. The method of division is unclear, though it appears to have had entrance doors on either side of the central bow.

No. 41 (to the right of centre) has three six-pane sash windows to the second floor and six/six-pane sashes to the first floor, all without horns. The ground floor arcade has three twentieth-century gates at the entrance to a shopping precinct at the rear. The ground floor was restored to limestone ashlar from a Victorian commercial front circa 1990.

No. 42 (Alliance and Leicester), the right-hand pavilion, has horned plate glass windows. The ground floor arcade, replaced in the late nineteenth century, has taller and wider arches of red sandstone and granite with bronze ornament to the cornice and shields and figures in the spandrels. To the right is a stained glass fanlight with leaded panel below and double three-panel oak doors with wrought iron grilles to the tops.

Interiors have not been fully inspected. No. 41 (surveyed 1987) retains an original stone staircase with square balusters and mahogany handrail, and some original architraving survives. No. 42 (surveyed 1983) features an elegant swagged frieze and architraves, original cornices, and Jacobean anaglypta friezes.

The terrace was originally named after Thomas Baldwin and was built on the site of a poor house. Land did not become available for building until later than the rest of the street, which explains the failure to continue with the standard elevation of Milsom Street. The street front was engraved by Malton in 1788, an indication of its status and prominence. The design represents a fusion of Wood-inspired Palladianism and more picturesquely conceived Neoclassicism, embodying Robert Adam's principle of 'movement'.