12, Castle Street

House, 12 Castle Street, Bridgwater

Built 1723–8 for James Brydges, Duke of Chandos, designed by Benjamin Holloway or Fort and Shepherd, the Duke's London surveyors. The building was used as a nursing home from around 1920 to 1990. It is constructed in red and yellow Flemish-bond brick, probably chequered, with moulded stone coping to the parapet, stone cornice, architraves and cills. The roof is double-pitch plain tile with a flat roof between the ridges and brick stacks to the gable ends.

The house is three storeys high with a double-depth plan and presents a symmetrical five-window range to the street. The parapet and cornice sweep up to the left, and the brickwork shows a vertical joint to the first floor on the left and the second floor on the right. The windows have cyma-moulded segmental-arched architraves carved from rectangular blocks set into the brickwork, with 6/6-pane sashes, some containing crown glass. The door has a moulded architrave with a twentieth-century wooden hood on brackets, flanked by narrow twentieth-century wooden pilasters. Cellar arches are visible at basement level.

Interior

The ground floor retains considerable early eighteenth-century character. The rear of the eight-panel door features plain panelling, large wrought-iron L hinges, lock, wrought-iron bolts and catches including an opening device for a central door-knob. The floor is laid in late nineteenth-century polychromatic tiles. A fine open-well, closed-string staircase to the rear left corner has turned balusters, turned newels with inverted swept pyramidal pendants and a swept moulded handrail; the treads are twentieth-century replacements. A twentieth-century entrance door to the rear, formerly a window, has panelled shutters.

The room to the right displays sophisticated early eighteenth-century joinery: ovolo moulding tops the simple skirting boards, a moulded dado-rail runs across, and full-height raised-and-fielded panelling covers the walls. The box cornice is interrupted and returned to spaces at the centres of the front and back walls and above the fireplace. To the left is a fireplace with an eared architrave to a painted stone fire surround featuring moulded and beaded inner arris with rounded corners to the top. Its moulded wood frame has a box cornice and a twentieth-century added mantelshelf; the grate is early twentieth-century tiled. Flanking the fireplace are two substantial cupboard doors, each of four raised-and-fielded panels set in wide moulded architraves with plinths; the panelling above and to the sides is designed to accommodate them. The back wall of the right cupboard is painted brick. Small plaster shells are attached to the ceiling in the spaces, that over the fireplace set into a larger shell within a hemispherical recess; those over the fireplace and front wall have ventilation grilles below.

The rear wall of the room to the right has been repositioned to create a passage behind. This wall features ovolo moulding to a simple skirting board, moulded dado rail, full-height raised-and-fielded panelling and a box cornice. It displays a fine painted carved wood fire-surround with a moulded cornice stepped forward at the ends, egg-and-dart moulding below, carved acanthus leaves to the consoles, two richly carved swags of fruit and flowers flanking a central vase on the lintel, and shell moulding framing a white marble inset on a plinth.

The cellar floor is entirely paved in brick or similarly-sized stone. Two tunnel vaults run parallel to the street, connected by a cross-vault. The wall to the right is divided into segmental-arched storage bays. Twentieth-century steel columns provide support to the front vault.

The terraces of houses in Castle Street form an important architectural group, unusual for their scale and ambition outside London's West End.