2 And 3, Upper Church Street

A pair of houses located on Upper Church Street, dating to around 1780. They are likely the work of John Wood the Younger and form part of an irregular terrace that rises uphill. The houses are constructed of limestone ashlar, with a rubble stone return side, and feature double-pitched slate mansard roofs with moulded stacks to the shared party wall.

The houses are three storeys with attics and basements, each with a three-bay ground floor arrangement. The upper floors have single tripartite windows. A continuous, slightly returned coped parapet tops the houses, along with a stopped coved cornice and a ground floor platband which steps up to number 3. Number 2 has paired dormers, splayed window reveals and six/six-pane sash windows to the second floor. A former Venetian window on the first floor has been replaced by a narrow, late 19th-century canted bay with a Jacobean-style fretwork cresting, opening onto an early 19th-century balcony across the facade. The balcony has a cyma-swept canopy resting on four wrought iron supports with trellised detailing and lead railings. The ground floor windows are six/six-pane sashes, while the basement windows are eight/eight-pane sashes, all without horns. Number 3 has a higher-pitched roof than number 2. It has horned plate glass sash windows, six/six-panes to the basement, two dormers and a tripartite window to the second floor. A former Venetian window on the first floor has been replaced by a narrower, flat-roofed canted bay in the centre, with a balconette. Both houses feature painted stone, pedimented Tuscan doorcases with engaged columns, containing five-panel doors glazed to the top.

Internal features of number 3 were documented by the Bath Preservation Trust in 1996, revealing a plain, six-flight wooden staircase; alcoves with shelving flanking a grey veined marble fireplace on the ground floor, with a moulded plaster cornice; similar alcoves to both first floor rooms, on either side of grey marble fireplaces, and to the second floor bedrooms. Number 2 was restored in 1979-80 by John Mosse, who was the architect for this work.