1, Castle Street

The building at 1 Castle Street is a Harbour Master’s house, later used as offices, constructed between 1723 and 1728. It was commissioned for James Brydges, Duke of Chandos, and possibly designed by Benjamin Holloway or Fort and Shepherd, who were the Duke's surveyors in London.

The house is built of red and yellow brick in a Flemish bond pattern, with Ham Hill stone used for the quoins and plinth capping. The Ham Hill stone architraves are painted, and the roof is tiled with pantiles, hipped to the left, with brick stacks at the rear corners. The building has a central entrance, arranged around two units, and is three storeys high, with a basement. The front elevation is symmetrical, with three windows on each floor. The upper storey is entirely brick, although the quoining on the left appears continuous. The windows are sash windows, with 6/6 panes of crown glass; those on the ground floor have moulded cills and are set within painted, rusticated stone segmental arches with stone jambs, each stone the size of a brick. A moulded keystone and plain plinths are visible on the architrave of the central six-panel door. To the left of the door is a timber lintel above a wide, late 18th or early 19th century shop window, featuring four rows of seven panes with thin glazing bars and a timber cill. Segmental arches flank the door, creating openings into the basement.

The left return is one window wide, with a C20 6/6-pane sash window on the second floor, a 6/6-pane sash with thick glazing bars and a forward frame on the first floor, and a similar window below with thin glazing bars. A blocked door to the right has a low lintel above a grille covering an opening to the basement.

Inside, a room to the left of the ground floor, behind the shop window, has a diagonal corner chimney breast to the rear left corner, a reeded cornice, and C19 tongue-and-grooved planking below a dado rail. The floor level on this side is notably higher than the rest of the house. The staircase against the rear wall is late 19th-century on the ground floor, but early 18th-century on the upper floors, featuring a closed string, turned balusters, and a moulded rail. A room on the first floor to the right has a corner chimney breast to the rear right and a moulded cornice which stops above the windows, reaching the ceiling.

The terraces of houses on Castle Street form a distinct group, notable for their scale and ambition, which is unusual for locations outside London’s West End.