8, Upper Church Street

This is a large house situated on the corner of Upper Church Street and Catharine Place, constructed around 1780. It is likely to have been developed by John Wood the Younger. The house is built of limestone ashlar with a double-pitched slate mansard roof, featuring three dormers and moulded stacks at the party walls. The building has a double-depth plan and extends over three storeys with an attic and basement.

The front elevation has five windows, a returned coped parapet, a modillion cornice, a ground floor platband and plinth, and a painted basement. The windows are six/six-pane sash windows, those on the lower floors having splayed reveals, and those on the first floor featuring semi-elliptical plan balconettes. A pedimented stone Tuscan doorcase with engaged columns frames the recessed six-panel front door. The left return fronting Catharine Place has mostly blind windows on the right-hand side. The left-hand range includes six/six-pane sash windows, a tripartite window on the second floor, a Venetian window with a balconette and splayed reveals on the first floor, and a similar flat-arched window on the ground floor.

Interior photographs taken in 1945 reveal fine plasterwork, including an overmantel panel with an oval medallion based on antique designs, suspended from strings of husks and festooned over paterae, above a stone-surrounded fireplace with anthemion-enriched consoles. A first-floor music room with a coved ceiling, a central starburst design, and musical trophies within fronds, faces Catharine Place. The house is listed at Grade II* due to the quality of its interior.