6, Argyle Street

This is a shop with living accommodation above, built around 1789 and altered in the 19th century. It was designed by Thomas Baldwin as part of the development extending from Robert Adam’s Pulteney Bridge. The building is constructed of Bath limestone ashlar with a Welsh slate roof. It has a double-depth plan, with a later full-height rear wing.

The exterior is three storeys high, with an attic and basement level, and is three windows wide. The front of No. 6 harmonises with Nos. 1-7 Argyle Street and the adjacent Goodridge front of the Argyle Congregational Chapel, forming a balanced terrace of nine bays. The shop front was added in the mid-19th century and features four fluted Corinthian columns supporting a deep entablature with an iron balconette above. It has plate glass windows and a recessed central entrance. The windows on the upper floors are late 19th-century plain sash windows. Architectural details include a Pompeian scroll band at second floor level and a sill band above, with remnants of a painted inscription below the second-floor windows. A cornice, parapet, and a mansard roof with double flat-topped dormers complete the exterior, along with an ashlar stack with decorative pots. The return elevation to Grove Street is ashlar, and has a platband at first-floor level. The rear elevation includes a full-height late 19th-century wing constructed in ashlar with sash windows. A rubble rear wall has a single sash window on each floor and a single dormer.

The interior was not inspected and the ground floor has been altered. Historically, Argyle Street, originally called Argyle Buildings, was built as an extension of Adam’s Pulteney Bridge into Sir William Pulteney's Bathwick estate. Building work began before the estate passed to Henrietta Laura in 1792. This terrace, along with its southern counterpart, forms a monumental extension northwards from Pulteney Bridge.