Numbers 1 To 14 (Consecutive) Royal Promenade And Attached Front Basement Railings

A terrace of 14 consecutive houses, numbers 1 to 14 Royal Promenade, built between 1845 and 1853 by J Marmont. The construction is limestone ashlar with lateral and party wall stacks. The roof is not visible.

The houses are arranged with a double-depth plan, each extending over three storeys, an attic, and a basement. Each house has a three-window front. The design presents a composed “palace front" terrace, with the end and middle six houses raised and projecting, and the middle four breaking forward again. Clasping rusticated pilasters mark the corners, rising to a deep bracketed cornice, topped by a moulded coped attic. The ground floor is banded up to a cornice, with a continuous first-floor stone balcony supported by large scrolled brackets with a pierced balustrade. Stone sill bands are present at the ground and first floors, with a plat band above the second floor.

The right-hand doorways are semicircular-arched, surrounded by eared architraves with large keys above fanlights. The doors are four-panelled with roundels. Semicircular-arched ground-floor windows have shouldered architraves with faceted keys and raised panels with aprons. Upper-floor windows have architraves, set in raised panels with aprons. The second-floor windows in the central section have first-floor console dentil cornices, and the second-floor windows have semicircular heads with ears and shoulders and aprons. Windows are generally 2/2-pane sashes.

The attic features a continuous semicircular-arched arcade, blind except for three-light outer windows to each house. The central section of the terrace has a taller attic with windows set in recesses, with five windows on each side of a large, central heraldic panel depicting a lion and unicorn flanking a shield. The end houses have entrances in their returns; number 1 has a single-storey porch with a semicircular-arched doorway, projecting jambs and parapet, and a three-window range of blind windows to the side; number 14 has a central two-storey porch, windows matching the front, with a balcony to the left-hand side, and a blind attic arcade.

The interior of the houses has not been inspected. Attached to the front is a cast-iron basement balustrade. This terrace is an advanced design, contemporary with Vyvian Terrace, but unified to create the impression of a single, palatial building. It is well-situated to the side of Victoria Square, with a deep flagged pavement in front.