1-7, Orange Grove

Orange Grove comprises a parade of shops with accommodation over, dating back to 1705-1708, with significant alterations and a uniform facade created in 1897 by CE Davis. The building is constructed from limestone rubble, rendered on the front and back, with pantile roofs. It has three storeys, cellars, and an attic, featuring barge-boarded gables, and a four-storey tower at the corner. The shopfronts, dating from 1897, have coved fascias and a consistent design. The windows are predominantly sashes with an unusual ten/one glazing pattern; those on the first floor have shell hoods, and the second-floor windows have cornices and pulvinated friezes. Gable windows are standard sashes of a late 18th-century style, with six/six panes. The tower (at No.1) rises four storeys, with sashes, six/six, cornices, and pulvinated friezes on the third floor. The tower features a plaster relief band, a balustraded parapet, and a conical roof. Rubble stacks with pots are grouped together. The rear elevation retains much of its original appearance, though No.6 has a three-storey extension, alongside minor single-storey additions. The rear windows are mostly six/six sashes of a late 18th-century style. The shops have been modernised internally; other interior features were not inspected. Historically, Orange Grove is a prominently sited sequence of shops designed to evoke a historicist style, rejecting High Victorian classical eclecticism. A print from 1737 reveals that the 1897 refacing was less extensive than it might appear, as the multi-gabled front and the corner tower (though absent by around 1894) were already present. Leases from 1707 and 1708 stipulated that all subsequent buildings added to the row must be ‘equal and uniform’ to those already in place. The structure incorporates stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops.