Numbers 25 And 27 And Attached Front Garden Walls And Piers

A pair of attached houses, built around 1892 by Henry Dare Bryan. The houses are constructed of snecked limestone rubble with limestone and brick dressings, brick on the second floor, brick ridge and external stacks, and a roof covered in plain tile and concrete tile, with both hipped and gabled sections. They are designed with a double-depth plan and are in the Queen Anne style. Each house is three storeys high and has a two-window front. The houses are symmetrical, with gables projecting from the ends and side entrances. The ground floor features mullion and transom casements set within stone frames. The first floor has mullion nine-pane sash windows. The doorways originally had mullion overlights under a semicircular-arched cornice and brick relieving arch, with panelled two-leaf doors, a central raised diamond design, but these have since been moved towards the rear and one doorway infilled. The ground-floor bays of the gables have four-light windows under bracketed canopies, and between these are three-light windows with dentil cornices. The first-floor gables have three-light windows, with two-light windows in between, both framed by shallow brick and stone arches. On the second floor, there are paired sashes beneath a corbel table and timber-framed gable, with half-dormers in between, featuring timber cross windows. The interior was not inspected. The property includes attached front garden walls and piers topped with ball finials. These houses represent an early part of a development influenced by Norman Shaw’s Bedford Park, dating from 1881.