1-7, Alfred Street

ALFRED STREET, SOUTH SIDE: NOS. 1-7

A symmetrical terrace of seven houses built between 1768 and 1772, designed by John Wood the Younger. This row was part of Bath's northward expansion and originally appeared in the rate books for 1772 as Alfred's Buildings. The terrace has undergone alterations in the 19th and 20th centuries.

MATERIALS AND ROOF

The houses are constructed in limestone ashlar with a double pitched hipped slate mansard roof featuring dormers and double moulded stacks set to alternate coped party walls.

EXTERIOR AND PLAN

The terrace consists of three storeys with attics and basements. Each house has a three-window frontage. The plans are of double depth with staircases generally positioned to the rear, except at No. 7 where the staircase is centrally placed.

The facades are articulated with a returned coped parapet, a slightly returned modillion cornice and frieze (returned in simpler form on the ground floor), and a returned ground floor platband. The pedimented central house (No. 4) and pavilions step slightly forward.

Windows feature moulded eared architraves; the second floor has six-pane over six-pane sashes, while the first floor has nine-pane over nine-pane sashes with moulded eared and shouldered architraves, cornices, and lowered sills on brackets. Ground floor windows are six-pane over six-pane sashes. Doors are in Tuscan cases with pilasters and pediments, set back with six-panel design.

INDIVIDUAL VARIATIONS

No. 1 (left terminal) has horns to windows, splayed reveals and balconettes to the first floor, and a five-panel door. The three-window left return to Lansdown Road features blind windows except for a six-pane sash to the first floor right.

No. 2 has splayed reveals to first and ground floors, trellised balconettes to the first floor, and a glazed six-panel door with a small circular window.

No. 3 has plate glass sashes in splayed reveals and a glazed five-panel door with a small rectangular window.

No. 4 (centre) features two three-pane sashes to a 19th-century attic storey behind the pediment. The ground floor is distinguished by three semicircular arched recesses with plain keystones dying into the platband; two semicircular arched windows with radial glazing bars to the left; and a large fanlight with tear-shaped panes flanking a circular central pane over a key pattern lintel. Double doors with hand-and-wreath knockers in circular central panels complete this composition.

No. 5 has six-pane sashes without horns (nine-pane to the first floor), splayed reveals, and a small blocked window beside a glazed six-panel door.

No. 6 has plate glass sashes, splayed reveals, a similar door and window to No. 5, and a full-height canted bay to the rear.

No. 7 (right terminal) has wide joints to the ashlar, six-pane sashes without horns (six-pane over nine-pane to the first floor with considerable crown glass), splayed reveals, and a glazed six-panel door. The three-window right return to Bartlett Street has blind windows to first and ground floor left, six-pane sashes with horns, "BARTLETT STREET" carved into the platband, and a small 20th-century shop set into the high plinth formed by the sloping site.

INTERIORS

Not inspected. Photographs held in the National Monuments Record from 1947 show the presence in No. 4 of a stone cantilevered stair with an alcove set into the corner of the upper flight and a baldacchino-like canopy above.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The terrace was built in association with the Assembly Rooms, which stood across the street. In compositional terms, it owes a debt to the south side of Queen Square. A plaque on No. 2 records that the portrait painter Sir Thomas Lawrence, PRA, resided there from 1783 to 1788.