Victoria Terrace

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

The front elevation spans 28 bays. Houses 2-9 are 3-bay units, while houses 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. The middle storey windows are fitted with cornices on consoles. To the right and left the elevation is slightly splayed, with bays 2-4 and bays 25-27 also brought forward with similar treatment to the central 4 bays. A plat band runs between the lower and middle storeys.

Windows follow a consistent pattern: the lower storey has round-headed small-pane sashes under tripartite lintels; the middle storey has 12-pane hornless sashes with panelled aprons; the upper storey has 9-pane hornless sashes. In houses 3, 4 and 7, sash windows have been reinstated where French doors were previously inserted. Entrances are reached up stone steps (replaced to house 1) and are mostly flanked by square panelled terminal piers. The doors themselves are fielded-panel with round-headed radial-glazed overlights. Basement windows are visible in some houses. Houses 2 and 6 each have openings with louvres, while houses 5, 9 and 10 have blocked windows.

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

House 10 has a 2-bay front with 'Victoria Terrace' inscribed into the first-floor band of the right-hand bay. The entrance is located in the 3-bay return elevation, comprising a central pointed entrance with stone steps up to a recessed replacement half-glazed door. Square-headed windows feature 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, the ground being at basement level. The 4 central bays are recessed. A balcony runs across the first floor, providing access to upper-level apartments numbered 12-20, reached by stone steps at either end. In 1937, steel-framed casement windows and half-glazed steel-framed doors were inserted at basement and ground storeys. At the upper level, each apartment has a half-glazed door under a tall overlight with latticework glazing, and small-pane sash windows. House 19 also has an inserted window to the right in the upper storey.

At the right end, the projecting gable end of house 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 house 20 is in the return elevation and has a half-glazed door with an inserted window to its left.