4-12A, London Street

This is a terrace of nine houses, now divided into eighteen cottages, built between 1845 and 1846 for the Great Western Railway Company as part of a village designed by I.K. Brunel to house railway workers. The buildings were constructed of coursed squared limestone rubble with a rear wall of coursed rubble, and feature ashlar dressings. They have slate roofs with stone bases and diagonal rendered shafts on the party walls. Each cottage has one bay and two storeys, sharing a common entrance with chamfered surrounds and bracketed hoods. Alternate pairs of cottages have window bays that project slightly, topped with gables on stepped kneelers. The windows are C20 round-topped casements within painted reveals. There are blind, chamfered slit lights over the doors. The rear of the cottages is enclosed by stone walls, and an outbuilding is present. The village’s construction was hampered by financial difficulties, resulting in a phased building process between 1842 and 1855. The cottages were acquired by the local authority in 1966 and subsequently restored. The settlement is considered one of Britain’s best-preserved and most ambitious railway settlements.