Victoria Terrace

Victoria Terrace (Numbers 1-20)

A large-scale, grandly-designed late-Georgian terrace emphatically urban in conception. The building is a symmetrical composition of 10 houses of 3 storeys, with basements, cellars and attics, constructed in limestone ashlar over a rock-faced basement. It has a slate roof behind a moulded cornice and parapet, with transverse stone stacks.

The front elevation spans 28 bays. Numbers 2–9 are 3-bay houses, while Numbers 1 and 10 have 2 bays to the front. The central 4 bays are brought forward under a pediment, with double-height pilasters over channelled rustication in the lower storey. Middle storey windows have cornices on consoles. To the right and left the elevation is slightly splayed, and bays 2–4 and 25–27 are also brought forward with similar treatment to the 4 central bays. Between lower and middle storeys is a plat band. Windows in the lower storey are round-headed with small-pane sashes under tripartite lintels. The middle storey has 12-pane hornless sashes with panelled aprons, and the upper storey has 9-pane hornless sashes. In Numbers 3, 4 and 7, sash windows have been reinstated in place of previously inserted French doors. Entrances are reached up stone steps (replaced to Number 1), mostly with square panelled terminal piers at the bottom. The fielded-panel doors have round-headed radial-glazed overlights. Basement windows are visible in some houses. Numbers 2 and 6 each have openings with louvres. Numbers 5, 9 and 10 have blocked windows.

Number 1 is 2-bay to the front, with the left-hand bay rounded. It has triple 8-pane hornless sashes in the lower storey with a moulded impost band carried over the windows and apron, a similar but plainer square-headed middle storey window, and a square-headed triple 6-pane sash window in the upper storey. The left-hand return elevation is 3 bays with details similar to the front. Basement windows have railed lightwells, except the right-hand bay where the window is blocked.

Number 10 has 2 bays to the front, with the right-hand bay inscribed with 'Victoria Terrace' into the first-floor band. The entrance is in the 3-bay return elevation, featuring a central pointed entrance with stone steps up to a recessed, replacement half-glazed door. It has square-headed windows with 12-pane and 9-pane hornless sashes, though the left-hand bay is blind. Basement windows are blocked.

The rear elevation is pebble-dashed and effectively 4-storey as the ground is at basement level. The 4 central bays are recessed. A balcony extends across the first floor, providing access to the upper-level apartments (Numbers 12–20), reached by stone steps at either end. Basement and ground storeys have, to each 2-window apartment, 3-light and 4-light steel-framed casement windows and half-glazed steel-framed doors, inserted in 1937. At the upper level each apartment has a half-glazed door under a tall overlight with latticework glazing, with small-pane sash windows. Number 19 also has an inserted window to the right in the upper storey. At the right end, the projecting gable end of Number 1 has a lean-to in the lower storey, two 12-pane hornless sashes in the middle storey, two 9-pane hornless sashes in the upper storey, and in the attic, two 12-pane horizontal-sliding sashes and a 4-pane horned sash window. At the left end the entrance to Number 20 is in the return elevation with a half-glazed door and an inserted window to its left.

The entrance opens to a round vestibule retaining its original plaster ceiling of radiating ribs on foliage brackets with a central rose. It has a panelled door to a cupboard on the left side and a similar but false door on the right side. The drawing room on the left side has a panelled door and shutters, and a moulded fireplace surround of 1937.