No. 17 With Gate Piers And Boundary Walls

No. 17, with gate piers and boundary walls, is a single house in a row, dating from approximately 1795. It may have been designed by Charles Harcourt Masters. The house is constructed of rendered, painted front with slate roofs. The building is a free-standing, double-depth compact block, slightly set back from adjoining properties with lower wings on each side, accessed from the south. The principal elevation and garden face north. The house has three storeys and attics, with a two-window main range. The front features plain sash windows. Dormers are present in the attic, above tripartite plain sashes with sidelights blank at the second floor. First-floor sashes are deeper, with the outer lights containing margin panes, and both windows are protected by iron flower guards. The ground floor has French casement doors flanking a central door, with a two-light casement in each wing. A parapet rises to window head height of the first floor. Architectural details include a platband above the ground floor, a lintel, shallow frieze, cornice, blocking course, and a parapet. The roof is a Mansard style with broad plain gables and deep stacks. The rear elevation has three windows, with raking dormers above two-light casements with transoms in original sash openings, dropped central stair lights, and a door under a slab hood on solid cheeks. A lean-to extension houses a garage to the right, and another with a door and window to the left. The interior has not been inspected. The building is accompanied by a pair of plain square ashlar gate piers, approximately 1.5 metres high, with moulded cappings and double blockings, and stone boundary walls returning at party boundaries. This house appears to be a later change of plan within a long row of speculative houses, intended mostly in pairs, and there is no No. 16. The Bath Chronicle advertised the opening of the Devonshire House Academy in the house on 14th January 1796.