7-10, St George's Place

Nos. 7-10 St George's Place

Four terrace houses, two now shops, dating to around 1790. The buildings are constructed in limestone ashlar with single pitched double Roman tile mansard roofs featuring one dormer and moulded chimney stacks set to the coped party wall to the right of each house.

The houses follow a double depth plan and present three storeys plus attics. Each house has a two-window front, with a continuous coped parapet and cornice running across all four properties. The upper floors feature paired windows, and doors are positioned to the left of each house.

No. 7, on the left, has painted ground floor treatment with a 20th-century door and two-over-two-pane sash windows. No. 8 has plate glass sash windows, a 20th-century door and shop frontage. No. 9 features plate glass sash windows with splayed reveals to the ground floor and a 19th-century five-panel door. No. 10 has upper floors similar to No. 9, with a painted ground floor containing a shop dated 1895 designed by C. Wibley, featuring a dentil cornice to the fascia, panelled pilasters, and an overlight above a 20th-century door.

Interior details recorded in site notes include No. 7 with rooms having panelling up to dado rail, cornices, chimneypieces, and a wooden stair with Doric column rails. No. 8 has a close string stair. No. 9 retains a wooden stair with Doric column posts, cornices and panelled floors to the first floor, and Rococo consoles to an arch in the ground floor passage. No. 10 retains similar partitions to No. 9 and a stair with a Doric column newel post, plus a cornice to the ground floor back room.

A rear extension was added to No. 10 in 1962.

The leases for these houses are dated 29 September 1788. The properties form part of a wider development on St James's Parade, originally Thomas Street, begun from 1765 onwards by Richard Jones, Thomas Jelly and Henry Fisher, who were granted permission in September 1765 to demolish the borough walls adjoining the Ambry gardens in order to build new houses. The street was closed off with bollards at each end, and the houses fronted a broad paved walk in place of the road. The elevations, attributed to Thomas Jelly and John Palmer, show the influence of John Wood the Younger's work, as seen in Rivers Street. The houses were principally built around 1768. Following bomb damage in the area, extensive clearance and redevelopment occurred, but St James's Parade was eventually reprieved.