Shaftesbury House, With Boundary Walls And Piers

Shaftesbury House is a large end terrace house built around 1800-1804, possibly designed by Charles Harcourt Masters. The front is rendered, while the rear is made of coursed and squared limestone, topped with a slate roof behind a parapet. The building is a compact square block with a low link to the adjacent No. 2.

The house has three storeys and a north-facing front with three windows. The windows are twelve-pane over two-light casements, featuring light cast iron balcony railings and a deep sill band. The ground floor also has two-light casements. Architectural details include a thin frieze, cornice, blocking course, and parapet, with two ashlar stacks at each end. The entrance is located at the west end from Wellsway, featuring a veranda with a lean-to canopy supported by slender trellis supports at the first floor, and a central pair of glazed doors with a margin pane transom light.

At the rear, there are two widely spaced twelve-pane sashes on the second floor, a mid-height staircase sash, and a wide gabled conservatory with a felt roof and early twelve-pane sashes set in wooden mullions. To the right, there is a link with a pitched roof covered in pantiles, and a returned boundary wall that includes a panelled door with a slab hood on brackets, as well as a wide garage door.

The high boundary wall at the Wellsway end features coping and sweeps down to a pair of panelled piers with heavy pyramidal cappings and anthemion finials, opposite the doorway and approached by two pairs of stone steps. The wall continues to Devonshire Buildings, where there is a pair of ashlar gatepiers and a lower wall that returns to the front of the building at the party boundary. Shaftesbury House is part of a very long speculative row of houses, which includes many variations but retains substantial original details, particularly on the north elevations.