Victoria Terrace

Victoria Terrace is a large-scale, grandly-designed late-Georgian terrace of emphatically urban character. 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. Nos 2-9 are 3-bay houses, while Nos 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. The elevation is slightly splayed to the right and left, and bays 2-4 and 25-7 are also brought forward with similar treatment to the 4 central bays. A plat band runs between the lower and middle storeys.

Windows are round-headed with small-pane sashes in the lower storey (in Nos 3, 4 and 7, sash windows have been reinstated 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 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 houses. Nos 2 and 6 each have openings with louvres. Nos 5, 9 and 10 have blocked windows.

No 1 is 2-bay to the front, its left-hand bay rounded with triple 8-pane hornless sashes in the lower storey with a moulded impost band carried over the windows and apron. The middle storey has a similar but plainer square-headed window, and the upper storey a square-headed triple 6-pane sash window. The left-hand return elevation is 3 bays with similar details. Basement windows have railed lightwells, except the right-hand bay which is blocked.

No 10 is 2-bay to the front, its right-hand bay inscribed with 'Victoria Terrace' 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 across the first floor provides access to the upper-level apartments, Nos 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. Windows are small-pane sashes. No 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 No 20 is in the return elevation with a half-glazed door and inserted window to its left.