1-5, Argyle Street

Nos. 1-5 Argyle Street

Shops with accommodation over, forming a symmetrical terrace on the north side of Argyle Street between Pulteney Bridge and Grove Street, part of the Great Pulteney Street development. Built around 1789, designed by Thomas Baldwin, with alterations from the 19th and 20th centuries.

The terrace is constructed in Bath limestone ashlar, partly painted, with Welsh slate roofs. The building comprises three storeys with attic and basement levels, arranged in fifteen bays overall (three bays to each house), articulated as three:nine:three. The endmost houses project forward and are taller, forming flanking pavilions. The central window features a semicircular head and decorated entablature, with the additional height occurring in the first floor room behind it.

All windows are sashes in plain reveals. Most feature late 19th-century glass, except No. 5, which retains restored late 18th-century type sashes: six/nine lights on the first floor and six/six above. The first floor windows throughout have dropped sills, as do those on the second floor of No. 5. A second floor sill band runs across the terrace but is broken at No. 5.

The ground floor shopfronts are all 20th-century replacements. Nos. 1 and 5 have projecting "character" frontages. No. 1 features an 1889 surround by Browne and Gill with later modifications; No. 2 has a 1919 example by Wills and Sons; No. 3 a 1925 design by F. J. Amery and Son; and No. 5 incorporates half of a mid-19th-century frontage extended in modern times by James Elliot. None of the original house doorways survive (compare with Nos. 8-17 opposite).

The roofline features a cornice and parapet with a mansard roof, each house having a pair of flat-topped dormers with plate glass sashes. Stone chimney stacks are present, with pots only to Nos. 4 and 5.

No. 1 has a return elevation on the north side of Pulteney Bridge, constructed of rubble with random windows of various periods. No. 5 features a return elevation to Grove Street in ashlar with a plain doorway, first floor platband, randomly positioned six/six sashes, parapet with band. The rear elevations are of rubble with ashlar dressings, except No. 5 which is ashlar, painted at lower ground floor level. No. 1 has a visually important rear elevation with a triple window to each floor and paired dormer, all with plate glass sashes. Various extensions and sash windows are present to the other houses; all retain restored glazing bars at No. 5, which is visually important over the through way of Spring Gardens Road. This through way may originally have been a waterway or mill leat, as indicated by historical maps.

Argyle Street, originally Argyle Buildings, extended the line of Robert Adam's Pulteney Bridge into Sir William Pulteney's Bathwick estate. The estate passed to his daughter Henrietta Laura in 1792, though building work on Laura Place had begun by 1788. This terrace, with its southern counterpart opposite, forms a monumental northward extension from Adam's bridge.

Historically, No. 1 housed the offices of the Bath Argus in 1906. No. 5 was T. Gibbons' circulating library in the 19th century and became George Gregory, Bookseller by 1906, with a remaining painted sign visible on the north return elevation.