Numbers 40 And 42 And Attached Front Garden Walls And Ball Finials

A pair of attached houses, numbers 40 and 42, built in 1898 by Henry Dare Bryan, located on Downleaze in Sneyd Park, Bristol. The houses are constructed from snecked limestone rubble with dressings, a tile-hung top floor, and brick ridge and diagonally-set external stacks. They have tiled gabled and hipped roofs and are built in a Queen Anne style, with a double-depth plan.

The houses are three storeys high with a basement, and feature a three-window front. A well-detailed, near symmetrical facade is punctuated by projecting paired central gables, mirrored on the Julian Road elevation. A large Tuscan porch with a segmental-arched, two-leaf door sits to the right of the gables, while the left return features an eared architrave with a panel above a two-leaf ridged door. Ground-floor windows are stone-framed mullion and transom casements with leaded glass. Timber first-floor windows have plate-glass casements with leaded transoms and the second-floor casements project slightly on small brackets. A raked buttress separates the ground floor, with king mullioned four-light windows either side of a central cartouche within a parapet. First-floor canted bays feature Ipswich windows with tapering octagonal columns supporting the overhanging gables. Second-floor windows are four-light casements beneath modillion eaves. A large chimney breast is positioned to the right of the doorway, and to the left a ground-floor segmental bow window incorporates a balcony with three-light windows to the ground and first floors, topped by a gabled eaves dormer.

The interior includes a hall screen with a stained-glass, half-glazed door and side lights, a tiled central hall, and a fireplace and built-in dresser cupboards in the rear right-hand room. The original staircase was removed during a later conversion to flats.

Attached to the front are garden walls and piers topped with ball finials. The design is strongly influenced by Norman Shaw's Bedford Park, dating from 1881.