Evelyn Terrace Lansdown Terrace Lansdown Terrace, Evelyn Court, Regan House, Attached Railings And Mews Archway

LANSDOWN TERRACE, EVELYN COURT, REGAN HOUSE, WITH ATTACHED RAILINGS AND MEWS ARCHWAY, MALVERN ROAD, CHELTENHAM

A terrace of 23 houses, now houses and flats, built around 1832 by architects RW and C Jearrad. The terrace comprises Nos.1-19 Evelyn Court and Nos.1-10 and 18-22 Lansdown Terrace, joined at the left by a mews arch, with attached area railings to Nos.7 and 22 and railings to the right boundary of No.1.

The terrace follows a double-depth plan with side stairwells and service ranges to the rear. The exterior is finished in ashlar over brick, with a slate roof and ashlar party-wall stacks. The buildings stand four storeys above a basement level, each house having two first-floor windows. The facades are richly detailed with stepped breakforwards, the principal feature being a two-storey rectangular bay surmounted by a dentil pediment, containing a wide corniced window to the second floor and a mock thermal window above.

Entrances to paired houses (Nos.2 and 3, 4 and 5, 6 and 7, and 9 and 10) are set back behind a pillared portico, which continues across the ground-floor windows to form loggias. Above these loggias, the first floor features dentil-pedimented rectangular bays with outer pairs of Ionic columns and lattice balustrades between, continuing as a loggia across centre windows with Doric pilasters, solid balustrade, and continuous architrave, frieze and cornice. Other houses have mainly left-set entrances with pilastered doorcases topped by friezes and cornices. The first floor to non-paired houses displays similar pilastered architraves with applied plinths and aprons. Further detailing includes third-floor windows above pedimented bays with consolebracketed cornices, and cornices over the second and third floors with blocking course and copings.

The windows vary by floor and location. Ground-floor windows are mostly tripartite, with 6/6 lights flanked by 2/2 sashes, some inserted into loggias as bays and similar to the first-floor pedimented bays. Elsewhere, the first floor has 8/8 and 6/6 sashes. The second floor features corniced tripartite windows with 6/6 between 2/2 sashes, otherwise 3/3 sashes. The third floor has tripartite 3/6 lights between 1/2 sashes in elliptically-arched surrounds to the main bays, and 3/6 sashes. The basement contains tripartite windows with 6/6 between 2/2 sashes where original. The return to the south contains a ground-floor entrance to No.1 within a rectangular bay with paired pilasters and four-panel double doors with side-lights and an overlight with glazing bars. The first floor features a pedimented rectangular bay with paired Ionic columns, followed by two full-height window-bays and a two-storey, two-window range with first-floor sill band and crowning cornice and blocking course, which abuts the tall and wide Mews Arch to the side of No.1. A second mews arch stands at the north end between Nos.22 and 23 (Regan House). The rear elevation retains many original 8/8 sashes, some with margin lights.

The interior, as recorded in conservation office photographs dated 1988, shows that No.21 contains embellished cornices, a hallway plaque with horse-riders, and marble fireplaces—one with Ionic columns in the rear first-floor room.

The attached railings to the south of No.1 have spearhead bars and stick dog-bars. Area railings to No.7 feature embellished rods. No.21 is surmounted by a tent hood on brackets. Balustrades with bulbous balusters flank the steps to the sides and to the areas.

RW and C Jearrad acquired the Lansdown development from Pearson Thompson around 1830 and continued building to their own designs. This is the most impressive example in Cheltenham of a terrace of quasi semi-detached houses, giving the impression of linked pavilions—a type conceived in the late 18th century as an integral part of the Picturesque ideal in urban planning, exemplified by The Paragon, Blackheath, London (1793). The terrace has been described as the most original in Cheltenham and forms an important part of the overall setting in Malvern Place. It forms an architectural unit with the Mews Arch to the side of No.1 Lansdown Terrace. Nos.11-17 are now known as Evelyn Court (numbered consecutively as Nos.1-19).