7, Castle Street

BRIDGWATER

ST2937SE CASTLE STREET 736-1/10/22 (South side) 24/03/50 No.7 (Formerly Listed as: CASTLE STREET (South side) Nos.7-13 (Odd))

GV I

House, now offices. 1723-8 for the Duke of Chandos. By Benjamin Holloway or Fort and Shepherd, the Duke's London surveyors. Flemish-bond Bridgwater brick with red headers and yellow stretchers, painted rusticated stone quoins to the left, moulded architraves, cills, brackets and doorcase; roof not visible; brick stacks. Double-depth plan with a rear left wing. 3 storeys with basement; symmetrical 5-window range. The left (south) end of the terrace that steps downhill from King Square, No 7 terminates the row. Its substantial cornice sweeps up to the left and caps the quoins, above it a plain brick parapet, probably rebuilt, has plain stone coping. The cyma-moulded segmental-arched architraves to the windows are carved from rectangular blocks set into the brickwork; plain consoles support moulded cills; some crown glass; 6/6-pane sash windows to the second floor, 6 panes over plate-glass lower sashes to the rest. A bolection-moulded architrave below a restored hood on brackets to the C20 door. A diamond pattern of red header bricks to the centre of the left return is flanked by former windows to the right and left of each floor, they are blocked with harder brick, below are 2 wide segmental brick arches to the basement. Rear wing not seen. INTERIOR: room to ground-floor left has diagonal corner chimney breast to the rear left, a simple early C18 cornice, some thick skirting board and a late C18 semi-elliptical arched recess to the rear. Room to right is late C18 in style with reeded cornice and moulding, low skirting board and a large semi-elliptical arched recess to the rear. The stairs, between rooms to the right, were formerly late C18 in style with fretted ends and a swept mahogany handrail, now boarded and painted; they are open-well to the first floor and dogleg above. Access to the rear wing is through a semicircular-arched doorway with a moulded archivolt. The terraces of houses in Castle Street form an important group, unusual for their scale and ambition outside London's West End. (Buildings of England: Pevsner N: South and West Somerset: London: 1958-: 100; Colvin H: A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1660-1840: London: 1978-: 428; VCH: Somerset: London: 1992-: 200).

Listing NGR: ST2996337164