The Officers Terrace (Mo 63) And Attached Railings, Rear Walls And Outbuildings

THE OFFICERS TERRACE AND ATTACHED RAILINGS, REAR WALLS AND OUTBUILDINGS

Terrace of five houses and stables, now used as houses and offices. Built 1720-24, laid out by Colonel C Lilly with Andrew Jelf, Clerk of Works, for the Board of Ordnance. Constructed in Dunstone rubble with brick party wall stacks and slate roof, in the Baroque style.

The plan is double-depth with end stables and rear service blocks. The exterior is three storeys with an attic and basement, forming a 21-bay range. This is a strongly articulated symmetrical terrace with a coped parapet. The lower two-storey central former Commissioner's House is double-fronted with a parapet and a small central pediment containing a lunette. Steps across the basement area lead to a round-arched doorway with a half-glazed door and plate-glass fanlight. The wide outer segmental-arched tripartite windows contain central 8/8-pane sashes with some thick glazing bars.

The flanking pairs of houses are set forward with clasping pilasters and a parapet, raised to the centre with a round-arched attic window, blind to the left-hand end. Each has an outer porch with raised clasping pilasters and doorways matching the central house, and round-arched side windows. Ground-floor windows are round-arched, while first and second-floor windows are segmental-arched, most fitted with 4/4-pane 19th-century sashes. The outer bays have a projected ground floor with a round-arched doorway and half-glazed door, and a segmental-arched first-floor window. The right-hand end extends to two storeys with a second-floor Venetian window.

Single-storey screen walls with a recessed flat-headed bay containing a round-arched doorway and half-glazed door open onto a courtyard and connect to the end former stables, which face sideways with 5-window return elevations. These have central doorways with timber surrounds and a cornice.

The interior of the central house contains a rear lateral passage, a rear transverse dogleg stair with uncut string and heavy stick balusters, and panelling with heavy rails featuring bolection mouldings and wainscot fields. The upper floor is partly open to the king post roof, which has timber cyma cornices. The joinery includes corner cupboards, fielded shutters and 2-panel doors.

Attached mid-20th-century basement area railings extend the full length of the terrace and turn into the entrances of each house. Attached rear rubble garden walls extend back to the Yard wall. To the north of the garden is an 18th-century rubble wall with slated outbuildings extending back to the Morice Gate.

The Terrace for the Yard Officers was part of Lilly's formal plan for the Yard, situated on the upper part above the excavated lower gun wharf, and built using stone quarried on site. It is an idiosyncratic example of the style associated with Hawksmoor and the Board of Ordnance, comparable to work at Woolwich Arsenal and Berwick-on-Tweed barracks. The unusually robust internal joinery suggests the work of a naval rather than house carpenter. The terrace is a notably early and strongly articulated example of a palace front composition, and part of a fine series of Officers' terraces in the Royal Dockyards.