Victoria Terrace

Victoria Terrace comprises houses numbered 1-20, a large-scale and grandly-designed late-Georgian terrace conceived emphatically as an urban composition. It is a symmetrical arrangement of 10 houses of three storeys, with basements, cellars and attics, constructed in limestone ashlar above a rock-faced basement, with slate roofs behind moulded cornices and parapets, and transverse stone stacks. The front elevation spans 28 bays.

Houses 2 to 9 are each 3-bay wide, 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 set over channelled rustication in the lower storey. The middle storey windows are furnished with 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 to the central bays. A plat band runs between the lower and middle storeys.

The windows vary by storey: the lower storey has round-headed 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 houses 3, 4 and 7, sash windows have been reinstated where French doors had been inserted. The main entrances are reached by stone steps, mostly flanked by square panelled terminal piers at their base. The fielded-panel doors feature round-headed radial-glazed overlights. Stone steps to number 1 have been replaced. Basement windows are visible in some houses; numbers 2 and 6 have louvred openings, while numbers 5, 9 and 10 have blocked windows.

House No 1 has a 2-bay front, the left-hand bay being rounded with triple 8-pane hornless sashes in the lower storey, a moulded impost band carried over the windows and apron, a 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 similar detailing. Basement windows are provided with railed lightwells, except the right-hand bay where the window is blocked.

House No 10 has a 2-bay front; the right-hand bay bears the inscription 'Victoria Terrace' into the first-floor band. The entrance is located in the 3-bay return elevation, a central pointed entrance reached by stone steps leading to a recessed replacement half-glazed door. This elevation 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-storeys high, as the ground is at basement level. The 4 central bays are recessed. A balcony runs across the first floor, providing access to the upper-level apartments numbered 12-20, reached by stone steps at either end. The basement and ground storeys of each 2-window apartment are fitted with 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 beneath a tall overlight with latticework glazing, and small-pane sash windows. House No 19 also has an inserted window to the right in the upper storey. At the right end, the projecting gable end of house 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 house No 20 is in the return elevation, with a half-glazed door and inserted window to its left.