Belvedere Villas And Attached Forecourt Wall And Railings

Belvedere Villas comprises four terrace houses on the east side of Lansdown Road, formerly known as Belvedere House. The building dates to the late 18th century and was heightened and converted into four separate houses around 1868, with twentieth-century alterations. It was designed by Thomas Baldwin.

The structure is built of limestone ashlar to the front elevation, with ashlar and rubble to the rear. The roof is double pile with Welsh slate covering the front and rear, and an area of flat felt roof to the rear left. The roof has two rubble chimneys stacks on the left end and two ashlar stacks on the right end, plus four ashlar ridge stacks.

The front elevation is four storeys with a basement, featuring eight windows in a regular arrangement. The first floor contains two six-over-six horned sash windows to the left (No.4) and three six-pane plate glass horned sash windows to the centre and right (Nos.1–3), positioned in plain reveals. The outer windows on the extreme left and right have incised panels above, set within ovolo moulded architraves in raised surrounds with leaf capitals to implied quarter pilasters. These are crowned with a frieze and moulded cornice with blocking course.

The second floor repeats this pattern with two six-over-six horned sashes to the left and three plate glass horned sashes to the centre and right, again in plain reveals.

The third floor contains eight windows from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—two-light casements in plain reveals with incised panels above. Several were replaced with UPVC windows in 2002.

The ground floor has a six-over-six horned sash window to the left and three plate glass horned sashes to the centre and right, set in plain reveals with splayed jambs. Four nineteenth-century doors, each with two round-headed moulded panels and a plate glass overlight in a plain reveal with a dentil cornice on heavy moulded console brackets, are positioned at the centre (Nos.2–3) as a paired arrangement forming hoods.

The basement level contains both six-over-six and plate glass sashes.

Decorative detailing includes a rusticated plinth; rusticated quoin strips continued to ground floor level at the angles of shallow forward breaks, which form single bay pavilions to left and right. A moulded cornice runs over the ground floor, forming a sill band to the first floor. A continuous nineteenth-century cast iron cresting forms a window box front. A small moulded cornice sits above the first floor. The pavilions feature a moulded sill band to the second floor, marked by pairs of flanking fluted pilasters with leaf capitals rising through the first and second floors, topped with an entablature with dentil cornice and shallow pediments. A moulded sill band to the third floor possibly represents the coping to a former parapet, with a recessed panel to the centre bearing relief lettering spelling "BELVEDERE VILLAS". Moulded stone brackets support the eaves gutter.

The rear elevation, partially visible, shows nineteenth and twentieth-century plate glass sashes and small casements.

The interior was not inspected during the survey, but records made by Bath Preservation Trust in 1972 document the interior of No.4. These records note the survival of a cantilevered wooden staircase rising five flights with a mahogany handrail, six-panel doors, and early nineteenth-century plasterwork.

An attached forecourt wall to the left, constructed in ashlar, incorporates a third window at ground floor level. It features an architrave above the ground floor and a shallow round-headed alcove at first floor level with a plinth for a tall narrow urn, now positioned in the garden of No.1 Belvedere Villas. The wall is topped with a frieze and moulded coping in the form of a cornice.

Subsidiary features include nineteenth-century cast iron railings with spear heads and trellis panels to piers on limestone bases fronting the property, and cast iron railings to the basement areas.