44, Portway

No. 44, Portway is a monumental, asymmetrical detached house built in 1867, designed as a mason's Gothic conceit. The two-storey house with an attic and basement is constructed of rubble with a short string course on the right side of the ground floor. It has a tiled roof with fishscale banding and bargeboards to the gables. The building features ashlar quoins and a large gable to the left. A gabled half dormer is situated on the first floor to the right. The facade has three windows on the first floor and four on the ground floor, with the outer two windows at the corners being transomed and supported by colonettes. A ground floor window on the left is located under a corbelled chimney, the chimney itself having been removed. Unusual tracery panels are located in the half basement, flanking the doorway. The central doorway is distinguished by a Caernarvon-arch and a stilted pointed over-arch with flamboyant tracery within. A right-hand first floor window incorporates a griffin sculpted to be spewing a twisted colonette downwards to a dated corbel on the string course. An inscribed panel within a former front chimney stack reads "Portway," and a monogram panel is situated to the right of the door. A section of the former yard wall remains, bearing the words "Marble Works" carved in raised letters.