3 & 4, Buckingham Square

Former estate workers' cottages for the Duncombe Park Estate in Helmsley. Built in the mid-19th century, possibly by Sir Charles Barry. Constructed of coursed, dressed sandstone with a Westmorland slate roof laid to diminishing courses.

The building comprises a mirrored pair of semi-detached cottages, each single storey with an attic and sharing a central stack. Originally single depth with single frontages, they have been extended to the rear. The front entrances are positioned at either end of the front elevation, while the rear entrances, now internal doors to the extensions, are towards the centre. Stairs rise from the rear entrances parallel to the rear wall, with a quarter wind at the top.

The front elevation displays broad façades with 3-light cross mullioned and transomed ground floor windows and 2-light mullioned and transomed dormer windows above. The lower lights of all windows are divided into 1 over 1 with fine glazing bars, the upper lights on the ground floor into 2 over 2, with each dormer upper light divided into two by a single vertical glazing bar. The front doors are original and distinctive, featuring gothic stylised joinery with panels in the form of a pair of infilled lancet windows. The doors retain very small 19th-century letter boxes. Both the doors and ground floor windows have Tudor style hoodmoulds. The shared central stack is moulded stone ashlar, lozenge shaped in plan, with four flues in line at right angles to the frontage.

The west gable end has single mullioned and transomed windows to both ground floor and attic, similar to the dormer windows and covered with Tudor style hoodmoulds. The east gable end has timber casement windows to ground floor and attic without hoodmoulds, and the stonework of this gable is more roughly dressed than that of the front.

The rear elevation is obscured by 20th-century lean-to brick extensions under a pantile roof. However, the back doorway and the mullioned casement window lighting the stair remain visible within this extension.

Internally, both cottages retain a chamfered spine beam supporting floor joists exposed to the ground floor rooms. They also retain some plank doors and built-in 19th-century cupboards, in addition to the original pegged purlin roof structure.

Historical records show that in 1843, William Duncombe, the second Baron Feversham, altered the entrance to Duncombe Park from Helmsley, moving the entrance gates further into the parkland and constructing a gate lodge at the south-western end of Buckingham Square. The gate lodge is attributed to Sir Charles Barry and shares architectural details with these cottages, which are known to have been built by the Duncombe Estate. Numbers 3 and 4 Buckingham Square are thought to have been constructed around 1843, alongside the remodelling of 34 and 36 Castlegate, to flank the approach to the park entrance. The cottages are shown on the 1856 Ordnance Survey map at 1:10560 scale. Between the 1912 and 1979 Ordnance Survey maps at 1:2500 scale, the cottages were extended to the rear.

At the back of the garden to No. 3 is a small, two-celled brick outbuilding with a pan-tiled roof, thought to have been the original outside toilet.