No 5 (Rodney House) With Its Stable Yard And Wall And Garden Railings

No. 5, known as Rodney House, is a prominent late 18th century town mansion built shortly after 1790 for the younger James Selfes. The building rises three storeys and is constructed from Bath stone, set on a projecting plinth. It features a plain string course at the first floor level and a Vitruvian scroll design with quatrefoils at the second floor cill level. The house has a fluted frieze with alternating fillers, a moulded cornice, and a parapet with moulded coping and balustrade panels above the windows.

There are five ranges of glazing bar sash windows, and the central doorway on the ground floor is topped with a plain arched fanlight and narrow sidelights, framed by an architrave. A slightly later Greek Doric porch, supported by two fluted columns on tall block bases, features two wall pilasters and an entablature with a triglyph frieze and modillioned cornice. The flanking symmetrical walls include garden doorways with plain piers and heads, which were originally round-headed arches in recesses adorned with carved foliage.

To the left, the wall continues to the stables, while a dwarf wall to the right is topped with arrowhead railings. The hipped slate roof has one ashlar chimney on the west side. The garden front has three ranges of windows, with the side windows slightly set back in panels that terminate in wide corner piers. The ground floor features pilasters with Venetian windows in arched recesses, and the central area has a door. The moulded coping to the blocking course includes end panels, and there are two blind pedimented openings on each side with blind panels that have carved swags above. The interior retains much finely executed plasterwork.

Rodney House, along with Nos. 2 to 4, the stable yard, garden railings, stable buildings, and the walls, forms a group with Polebarn House, its boundary wall, gatepiers, and gates, as well as Nos. 1 to 6 Yerbury Almshouses on Yerbury Street.