No. 20 And Attached Garden Walls, Balustrade And Gate Piers

House, now flats. Circa 1765. Developed by Thomas Omer.

This is an exceptionally ambitious edge-of-town villa in the neo-Palladian style, terminating Harlequin Row. It comprises a detached, three-storey, five-bay main front with a pedimented centre breaking forward slightly, and a single-storey three-bay extension to the right.

The front elevation is constructed of limestone ashlar, whilst the right side uses ashlar and coursed squared stone pecked for render. The roof is parapeted, with Welsh slate to the front and artificial slate to the rear. Ashlar stacks with early clay pots sit on coped gable walls to left and right ends.

The first-floor windows comprise five plate glass horned sashes in cyma moulded architraves with pulvinated friezes and cornices to the far left and right. The three centre windows have shouldered architraves with pulvinated friezes and pediments above, with moulded stone sills projecting from the sill band, which forms coping to blind balustraded panels below the windows. The second floor has five plate glass sashes in cyma moulded architraves. The ground floor contains five plate glass sashes in plain reveals with stone sills, including one to the far right in the single-storey extension. To the left and right of the main range are openings with heavy keystones to the centre, and to the extension opening recessed within an arcade.

The ground floor features a six-panel door with fielded panels and a fanlight with intersecting glazing bars incorporating a mitre-shaped lantern, deeply recessed in a round-headed opening. V-jointed rustication with a blind arcade of three round-headed openings with an impost band and projecting keystones characterises the ground floor, repeated to the single-bay front of the extension to the right. A band course runs over the ground floor, with a sill band to the first floor and a lintel forming a frieze. The moulded eaves cornice has dentils, and the triangular pediment features pedestals for acroterial ornaments now missing, with an oculus to the tympanum.

The rear elevation features a half-round stair turret to the centre with a twentieth-century door in a probable former first-floor window opening, which has a cyma moulded architrave, frieze and cornice above, approached by a slate bridge over an area to the ground floor. Four plate glass sashes in cyma moulded architraves with friezes and cornices and stone sills are present on the first floor. The second floor has four plate glass sashes in cyma moulded architraves, and a three-light window in a similar eaved and shouldered architrave to the turret at the centre. The ground floor has plate glass sashes, twentieth-century windows and a door. The rear garden elevation is dominated by the central projecting bow, which contains the stair's half-landings, endowing the rear with a far more architectural character than most Bath terraced houses.

The interior was not inspected for this listing but was recorded by the Bath Preservation Trust Survey of Interiors in 2000. This survey reports the survival of features including a cantilevered stone staircase with half-landing in a semi-circular apse-like feature at the rear of the house, featuring flared 'crinoline' iron rails and a mahogany handrail. The ground-floor sitting room retains a dado rail with walls divided into compartments framed with cable mouldings and a plaster modillion cornice to the rear. Various elements of plasterwork and joinery survive elsewhere. The interior was subdivided into three flats circa 1973–76.

Attached subsidiary features include garden walls and a pair of rusticated ashlar gatepiers with moulded caps, together with a stone balustrade attached to the garden wall on the right side.

This property stands on ground formerly owned by the Hayne family from 1638, when Thomas Hayne purchased it from William Snygge. By inheritance it passed to Charles Hayne in 1750, who cleared it of mortgage and other encumbrances. By 1756, plans to sell Vineyards to Thomas Omer for building had reached an advanced stage, though these were not finally realised until an indenture of 26 February 1765, in which Charles Hayne sold to Thomas Omer, Gentleman, and Thomas Jelly, Carpenter (his trustee), the site of Vineyards for building at a yearly rent of £50. Belmont was later constructed on the west edge of the same ground. Vineyards had previously been used as a vineyard until circa 1730, when the springs that watered it began to fail. The row to the north of the Countess of Huntingdon's Chapel was originally called Harlequin Row because of its unusual use of brick and stone in construction.