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, built in 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.

Houses 2 to 9 are 3-bay houses. 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. 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 are round-headed with small-pane sashes in the lower storey (sash windows have been reinstated in houses 3, 4 and 7 in place of inserted French doors), under tripartite lintels. The middle storey has 12-pane hornless sashes with panelled aprons, and the upper storey has 9-pane hornless sashes. Entrances are reached up stone steps (replaced to house 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. Houses 2 and 6 each have openings with louvres. Houses 5, 9 and 10 have blocked windows.

House 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, 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.

House 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. It 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 is pebble-dashed, and effectively 4-storey as the ground is at basement level. The 4 central bays are recessed. A balcony crosses the first floor, providing access to the upper-level apartments, houses 12-20, reached by stone steps at either end. The basement and ground storeys have 3-light and 4-light steel-framed casement windows and half-glazed steel-framed doors, inserted in 1937, with two such windows and a door to each 2-window apartment. 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, with a half-glazed door and an inserted window to its left.