Numbers 20, 22 And 24 And Attached Walls, Piers And Railings

Terrace of three houses on the north-east side of St Michael's Hill in Bristol, dated 1695 in deeds. Built for Edward Colston to provide revenue for his almshouses next door.

The terrace comprises numbers 20, 22 and 24, each three storeys with an attic storey. The outer ranges (numbers 20 and 24) are single-depth two-bay structures flanking the wider number 22, which is probably three bays. The buildings are constructed of render over white lias rubble with brick party wall stacks and pantile gabled roofs. Each house has two stone-coped gables below the ridge with bargeboards, and a parapet. Number 22 has replica ball finials.

Number 20 has an ashlar public house front dating from the mid-19th century, with fluted jambs to the left-hand and central doorways and plate-glass windows. Number 24 has a projecting ground floor over the front garden with a central doorway and flanking horned sashes. The upper windows are mostly 20th-century replacements: 8/8-pane sashes (1970s) in exposed frames to number 22, plate-glass to number 20, and casements to number 24. Number 22 has a central doorway with a stone bracketed canopy and a low 19th-century six-panel door. All three houses retain tall gable stacks. The rear elevations of numbers 22 and 24 are symmetrical with paired gables to raking roofs; number 20 has a pair of small gables. Numbers 22 and 24 have three-storey stair towers with raking roofs and small two-light casements, some with stone slate drips over windows. Number 22 retains wood-mullioned windows. Number 24 has ground-floor ovolo-moulded cross windows and a similar door frame with bar steps.

Number 20 has been largely altered in the 20th century. Number 22 retains many original internal details. An internal timber frame with a post to the rear left of the passage carries chamfered beams, originally cased in plaster. The front door opens into a through passage leading to a fine late 17th-century 16-panel rear door with a chamfered frame and bar steps. The staircase is a winder dogleg stair with elm treads, uncut string, square jewels with turned finials and splat balusters. The ground-floor room to the left has an early 18th-century panelled cupboard set in moulded wood architrave to the left of an open fireplace with a replacement lintel. Wide elm floorboards are present throughout. The upper rooms have 19th-century cast-iron fireplaces with plain stone surrounds. Doors date from the 17th to 19th centuries. Late 17th-century doors are two-panelled; that to the cellar is set in a 19th-century beaded architrave, and two bolection-moulded doors open to the first floor. Cyma mouldings appear on the architraves in the first-floor lobby, to the stair window and to doors. The second floor has three beaded architraves on heavy pegged frames in the lobby. The room to the left has a probably late 17th-century cyma-moulded surround to an early 19th-century cast-iron grate; the room to the right has a similar fireplace surround. The roof was renewed in 1968. Number 24 has been altered including the loss of the lower rear stair. Rooms beneath Colston's Almshouses extend back to Horfield Road.

The subsidiary features comprise attached wrought-iron railings to the front area of number 22 and ashlar quadrant walls and piers to the front area of number 20.

The terrace was originally described as "lately built" in 1695, with each property having a 12-foot-deep front yard to the hill. It was illustrated by Samuel Jackson in the mid-1820s. The two public house fronts are shown on a map of 1888. The terrace forms part of a good architectural group with Colston's Almshouses next door.