1-4 Exeter Street With Yard Walls

A terrace of four cottages built between 1853 and 1854 for the Great Western Railway Company as part of a planned village to house railway workers. The cottages were constructed of ashlar limestone with black mortar, featuring brick rear walls and slate roofs with ashlar stacks on the party walls. They are two storeys high with one bay per cottage, arranged two rooms deep, and include a side through passage. A C20 rear outbuilding is present. The cottages feature a low plinth, chamfered window and door surrounds, with doors ending in chamfered stop. They have eighteen-pane doors and four-pane sashes to both floors. Low brick yard walls are topped with blue hogs-back copings. The appearance is similar to those at 1-3 Bathampton Street, 28-29 Exeter Street, and 25-26 Bathampton Street. The cottages underwent extensive renovation around 1974. The development represents one of Britain's best-preserved and architecturally ambitious railway settlements, originally designed by I.K. Brunel to address the need to house workers for the Great Western Railway works. Construction was delayed by financial difficulties and the village was completed in the 1850s.