53-65 Great Pulteney Street and attached lamp standards to No. 59

Thirteen symmetrical terrace houses of Grade I listed status, built between 1790 and 1794 on the south side of Great Pulteney Street in Bath. The houses were designed by Thomas Baldwin, John Eveleigh and others as part of the late 18th-century development of the Bathwick estate east of the River Avon. Robert Adam had prepared designs in 1782, but Baldwin was responsible for the eventual design. Leases were granted from 1788, though progress was delayed by the building crash of the mid-1790s. Great Pulteney Street was laid out on an unusually generous scale of 100 feet wide and represents one of the most imposing urban set-pieces of its day in Britain.

The buildings are constructed of limestone ashlar with double pitched hipped slate mansard roofs featuring dormers and moulded stacks to party walls. Each house has a double depth plan and rises to three storeys with attics and basements, plus sub-basements to the rear. Each property has a three-window range to the street front.

The exterior displays a continuous balustraded parapet with moulded coping, an entablature with modillion cornice, and moulded sill courses to the upper floors. A Vitruvian scroll band runs between the upper floors (not returned), with a ground floor cornice and lintel frieze that are returned. The ground floor is rusticated with radial voussoirs to semicircular arched recesses forming an arcade, complete with impost cornice, lintel frieze, and platband over plinth. Windows are mostly six-over-six-pane sashes, those to the ground floor recesses having cobweb glazing and moulded sills. The original eight-panel doors with cobweb fanlights have in many cases been altered to six panels with stilted fanlights.

The end houses (Nos. 53 and 65) and the centre section (Nos. 55–59) have cornices set very slightly forward, with bays articulated by a grand order of fluted Corinthian pilasters rising from the ground floor cornice, the facade being flat below the cornice. Nos. 55–59 are pedimented with the Pulteney arms in the tympanum.

Nos. 53 and 54 together form Duke's Hotel, with the main entrance in a left return facing Edward Street. This hotel section has an eight-window range return with coped parapet, cornice and returned ground floor cornice. The left-hand range contains blind windows, while the right features two full-height segmental bays, mostly with blind windows. A flat right-of-centre entrance range contains horned plate glass sash windows to the entrance, centre of the left-hand bay, and to the sides of the first floor of the right-hand bay. The ground floor of the left-hand bay has six-over-six-pane sashes. Steps lead up to double four-panel doors with margin lights and a wide elaborate cobweb fanlight. The three-window front in Great Pulteney Street follows the pattern described above. The first lease for the house dates to 1791.

No. 55 features an eight-panel door glazed to the top under a cobweb fanlight and a scrolled overthrow with lampholder, bearing a plaque stating that Napoleon III stayed there. The door to No. 56, which was a window at the time of survey in 2010, was reinstated in 2017. No. 57 has a six-panel door and a late 19th-century cast iron balcony spanning the first floor. No. 58 contains a six-panel door with pilasters to the upper floors and was the home of Fletcher Partis, founder of Partis College on Newbridge Hill. No. 59 at the centre has a five-window range with pediment and a fine balcony to the first floor. Its eight-panel door with cobweb fanlight is flanked by attached cast iron lozenge-trellised lamp standards and a plaque stating that Bishop Thirlwall dwelt and died there in 1874–1875. This centre house was probably originally intended for Sir William Johnstone Pulteney, the owner and developer of the estate. No. 60 has an eight-panel door with an altered fanlight. No. 61 has an eight-panel door with a plain fanlight. No. 62 displays a six-panel door and an attached scrolled overthrow. No. 63 has an eight-panel door with a cobweb fanlight. No. 64 has a six-panel door and a cobweb fanlight. No. 65, the right terminal house, has an eight-panel door with a cobweb fanlight and pilasters to the upper floors.

Interior details recorded by Bath Preservation Trust in the 1990s for Nos. 53–54 include a front door divided into two panels with a fanlight above, and a staircase with stone treads and two banisters per tread, with wooden elements and painted metal inserted every other pair. A continuous mahogany veneer handrail runs from basement to third floor. Two curved false windows appear in the first floor room overlooking Edward Street. Many ground floor doors have been removed.

Nos. 53–54, formerly St Monica's Hotel, were converted to residential use in 1966 and returned to hotel use around 1997. Nos. 55–59 were formerly the Cleveland Hotel, converted to a residential home for the elderly in 1975, and in 2017 were renovated into private apartments; during this renovation work, evidence for two ballrooms or reception rooms was discovered in No. 57. No. 60, inspected in 1981, contains early 19th-century white marble fireplaces and elaborate cornices with garlands. No. 61 was subdivided in 1991. No. 65 retains an original twelve-panel window in the hall and three Tudor arches in the old kitchen, now blocked.