18-30, Clarence Street

Terrace of eleven town houses, later converted to nursing home and offices, now entirely offices. Built 1832–3 as part of William Rees's development of Clarence Street. The terrace underwent 20th-century alterations, most notably the conversion of the four houses at the south end to a nursing home with a new attic storey added within a mansard roof.

The buildings are constructed of stuccoed brick with stone details, except for ashlar work above the first floor of No.26. Slate roofs predominate, with hipped mansard slate roofs and dormers over the altered section. Brick chimney stacks serve throughout.

The houses originally comprised double-depth blocks with rear wings, except for No.18 Clarence Street at the south end, which is the larger corner house with its principal front facing Russell Street.

The Russell Street frontage of No.18 displays three storeys, basements, and attics across four bays of varying width. An offset plinth runs below; a continuous band at second-floor level is interrupted by the raised heads of the first-floor windows. A crowning entablature caps the composition. At the ground-floor outer corners, clasping piers rise through the upper storeys as giant clasping pilasters with moulded bases and capitals, supporting the entablature. The recessed entrance porch in the second bay from the left is framed by Roman Doric pilasters and an entablature with modillion cornice. To the left of the porch sits a single sash window; to the right, two sashes. All ground and first-floor openings feature moulded architraves and projecting sills. The first floor carries four sashes, each framed by pilasters and entablature with pediment on console brackets and projecting stone sills on end-brackets. The second floor has four shorter sashes with projecting sills. All sashes retain glazing bars: 4x3 panes on the ground and first floors, 3x2 panes on the second floor.

Along Clarence Street, each house presents two bays with a slight projection to the four houses at the south end and the two at the north end. A continuous raised band runs across the front at first-floor level. The fronts of the projecting houses are defined by a giant order of pilasters with moulded bases and capitals, set on blocks projecting slightly from the first-floor band.

On the ground floor, No.18 has two sashes to the right. The remaining houses feature sashes infilling former doorways, with larger sashes (4x4 panes glazing bars) flanking an original doorway with rectangular fanlight of radiating glazing bars and six-panel door to the former house at the left. No.20 has a 20th-century double sash window and doorway with plain fanlight, both framed by 19th-century pilasters supporting a fascia. Nos.22, 24, 26 and 28 each have doorways with fanlights, mostly of radiating glazing bars, and sashes to the left with glazing bars (originally 4x4 panes in the upper sash frames of Nos.22 and 24). No.30, originally two houses, has a former doorway infilled with a sash and a sash to the left of the first house, and a doorway with fanlight and sash to the left of the second house; all have plain sashes. The first floors of both sections carry two sashes; the second floors two shorter sashes, mostly with glazing bars (3x4 panes).

The interior was not inspected at the time of listing.