12-21, Bathwick Street

A terrace of ten houses, numbered 12 to 21, situated on the north side of Bathwick Street, built around 1790 as part of the Bathwick Estate scheme by Thomas Baldwin. The houses are constructed of limestone ashlar, stepped slightly uphill, and have double-pitched slate mansard roofs with paired and triple dormers, as well as moulded stacks to the left party walls and gable ends. The plan is double depth.

The architectural style is of the late 18th century, with each house featuring one wide tripartite window on each floor. Semicircular arched entrances with fanlights are found to the right of the terrace, between numbers 18 and 19; taller, flat arches mark paired entrances, with a passage to the rear of number 18 and a door with a window above for number 19, which is of a two-window range. Continuous coped parapets, cornices, and friezes run along the terrace, complemented by a second-floor sill band and ground-floor cornices. Banded rustication appears below the ground-floor sills. A grand order of pilasters with tall foliate capitals flanks each group of houses. The tripartite windows on the second and ground floors have plain architraves, while four narrow pilasters with consoles rise from the ground-floor cornice to flank the first-floor windows, supporting dentil cornices and friezes adorned with double-drop festoons and paterae, and forming plain aprons to the windows.

Number 12 has six/six pane sash windows to the attic and second floors, with plate glass sashes on the remaining floors, featuring two radial glazing bars to the fanlight and a late 19th-century cast iron balcony on the first floor. Number 13 has plate glass sash windows to the attic, six/six pane sashes elsewhere, a blocked fanlight, and an early 19th-century balcony on the first floor. Number 14 has plate glass sash windows and a triple dormer with a plain fanlight. Number 15 has six/six pane sash windows to the attic and ground floors (with horns), plate glass sashes to the upper floors, an early 19th-century balcony on the first floor, radial glazing bars to the fanlight, and a mid/late 19th-century six-panel door with bolection-moulded panels. Number 16 has six/six pane sash windows and a plain fanlight. Number 17 is similar, with a blocked fanlight. Number 18 has plate glass sash windows and a plain fanlight, positioned under a flat-arched passage entrance to the right. Number 19, which is a two-window range, includes a tall margin-paned overlight above a door to the left and six/six pane sash windows. Number 20 has plate glass sash windows to the attic, six/six pane sashes to the rest, and a plain fanlight. Number 21 has plate glass sash windows, margin panes, anthemion motifs to the fanlight and roundels to the central panels of the door. The interiors were not inspected.

Historically, the terrace is notable as the former residence of Benjamin Barker, the landscape painter known as the `English Poussin', who exhibited from number 16 in 1800.