8 and 9, Grove Road

This is an early 18th-century house, later extended in the late 18th century and altered in the 19th century, now forming an attached pair of properties. The building is rendered with limestone dressings, features gable and party wall stacks, and has a pantile hipped roof. It is of a mid-Georgian style, with three storeys and an attic, and a three-window front. The symmetrical facade has a thin cornice, a central pediment, and a parapet. The paired doorways are topped with bracketed pediments, have plate-glass fanlights, and contain six-panel doors. The windows are sash windows with exposed frames; the ground floor has 8/8-pane sashes, the first floor has a right-hand tripartite window with 6/6-pane flanked by 2/2-pane sashes, a central oriel with 8/8-pane flanked by 4/4-pane sashes, and a left-hand 8/8-pane sash; the second floor has a central Venetian window with 6/6-pane flanked by 2/2-pane sashes, and paired 6/6-pane sashes each side. The interior of No.9 has been modernised. No.8 retains an open-well staircase with column newels, a ramped rail and 20th-century balusters; a good 18th-century frieze and cornice in the right-hand front room includes pilasters to elliptical-arched recesses. The first-floor central room extends above No.9, featuring wainscot, a modillion cornice, and a panelled soffit and reveals to an early 18th-century rear oriel, now a bayed recess. A coved cornice is found in a rear second-floor bedroom, and the attic contains three rooms. Other original features consist of six-panel doors, panelled shutters, window seats, and an 18th-century fireplace with a swagged cast-iron lintel. This is an unusual early Georgian house that was extended and subdivided in the late 18th century, likely at the same time as the adjoining terrace, which has matching doorcases.