18, Raby Place

No. 18, Raby Place is a house built between 1823 and 1825, forming the right-hand end of a terrace of eighteen houses and designed by John Pinch the Elder. The building is constructed of limestone ashlar with a shallow-pitched roof hidden behind paired dormers and a single dormer to the right return. There are also two ridge stacks. The interior plan is double depth. The symmetrical three-window front faces the street at a right angle, and the two-bay return to Bathwick Hill is slightly set back from numbers 1 to 17 Raby Place. The exterior features a coped parapet, cornice, and frieze, clasping pilasters to quoins, a ground floor platband, and banded rustication to the ground floor. It has six-pane sash windows. An entrance to No. 17 Raby Place is located in the rear of the left return. Several windows on the upper floors and to the right of the entrance front are blind. A three/six-pane sash window is situated on the second floor, and a six/six-pane sash is over an enclosed porch with slightly pedimented piers to a stone balustraded parapet, featuring a cornice and dentil frieze over a tall overlight and double doors. The right return has a Gothic two-light pointed arched opening with coloured glass set within a flat arched recess on the second floor. A low, two-storey wing extends to the right, with a coped parapet, cornice, a three/three-pane sash window to the first floor, and a barred sliding sash window to the ground floor. Several painted advertising inscriptions are overlaid between the ground and first floors on the front facade. The interior has not been inspected. The house is directly above a Great Western Railway tunnel of 1840, and a connection with Isambard Kingdom Brunel has been suggested. It has undergone extensive restoration in recent years.