Victoria Terrace

Victoria Terrace

1-20 Victoria Terrace is a large-scale, grandly-designed late-Georgian terrace of emphatically urban conception. The building comprises a symmetrical composition of 10 houses of 3 storeys with basements, cellars and attics. The external walls are of limestone ashlar over a rock-faced basement, with a slate roof behind a moulded cornice and parapet, and transverse stone stacks. The front elevation spans 28 bays.

Numbers 2-9 are 3-bay houses. 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. The middle storey windows have cornices on consoles. To the right and left the elevation is slightly splayed, and bays 2-4 and 25-7 are also brought forward with similar treatment as the 4 central bays. Between the lower and middle storeys is a plat band.

Windows throughout the front are round-headed with small-pane sashes in the lower storey. In numbers 3, 4 and 7, sash windows have been reinstated in place of inserted French doors. The middle storey has tripartite lintels with 12-pane hornless sashes and panelled aprons. The upper storey has 9-pane hornless sashes. Entrances are reached up stone steps (replaced to No. 1), mostly with square panelled terminal piers at the bottom. Fielded-panel doors have round-headed radial-glazed overlights. Basement windows are visible in some of the 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, of which the left-hand bay is rounded with triple 8-pane hornless sashes in the lower storey with moulded impost band carried over the windows and apron. The middle storey has a similar but plainer square-headed 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, of which the right-hand bay has 'Victoria Terrace' inscribed into the first-floor band. The entrance is in the 3-bay return elevation with a central pointed entrance and stone steps up to a recessed, replacement half-glazed door. This elevation has square-headed windows with 12-pane and 9-pane hornless sashes, but 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 spans the first floor, providing access to the upper-level apartments, Numbers 12-20, reached by stone steps at either end. The 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. Windows are small-pane sashes. Number 19 also has an inserted window to the right in the upper storey. At the right end, the projecting gable end of No. 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 and has a half-glazed door with an inserted window to its left.