40, Sydney Buildings

This is a house, built around 1820, forming the left-hand end of an irregular terrace that backs onto the Kennet and Avon canal. It is constructed of painted limestone ashlar with an unseen roof and moulded stacks to the right party wall. The building follows a double-depth plan.

The two-storey house, with a lower ground floor to the rear, has a two-window front. It steps slightly forward from the adjacent building at number 39, although the parapet, cornice, first floor sill band, and ground floor platband are continuous. The ground floor exhibits banded rustication with radial voussoirs and slightly dropped keystones over flat arched recesses. There are six/six-pane sash windows, with balconettes to those on the first floor. To the left is a shallow, blocked overlight with a lozenge panel and reeded lintel over a five-panel door with glazing to the top.

The interior, which was recorded by the Bath Preservation Trust in 1990, includes a cantilevered stone staircase with a mahogany handrail. Other features of note are the alcoves or cupboards flanking the ground floor chimneypieces, scrolled foliate plasterwork to the drawing room cornice, reeded architraves with paterae roundels to the corners, and six-panel doors. Most of the fireplaces have been blocked. A dining room in the lower ground floor retains a stone chimneypiece and a scrolled plaster cornice.

A design matching this elevation was submitted to the Bathwick Estate Office in 1820.