1-23 Taunton Street and yard walls

A terrace of 24 cottages was built in 1843 for the Great Western Railway Company as part of a new village designed to house workers for the Great Western Railway works. The cottages are constructed of coursed rubble limestone with slate roofs and four-flue brick stacks on the party walls. There are two storeys. Numbers 1, 2, and 19 to 23 each have two bays, while numbers 3 to 18 are single-bay cottages, all with two rooms deep and a lean-to staircase at the rear. The ground floor openings have segmental pointed brick arches, containing twelve-pane casement windows in deep, painted reveals. A 1970s door, inset on a splay and featuring a fifteen-paned light to the left room in double units, has been added. Upper floor windows are four-pane casements, all with stone sills. The rear yard walls are red brick with blue hogs-back copings and boarded gates. The cottages are similar in appearance to those at numbers 5-27 Exeter Street. They underwent extensive renovation around 1974, and include C20 additions in the walled rear yards. The village as a whole is one of Britain’s best-preserved and architecturally most ambitious railway settlements.