Survey Data
Reg No
50060381
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Artistic, Social
Original Use
House
In Use As
Office
Date
1880 - 1900
Coordinates
315849, 235905
Date Recorded
01/09/2014
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Attached three-bay two-storey former house, built c.1890, with canted bay windows to front, and two-storey extension to rear. Abutted by house to south. Now in use as college head office. Hipped tiled roof with terracotta ridge tiles, red brick chimneystacks with yellow brick string courses, red brick saw-tooth cornices and octagonal clay pots over each gable, and with roof-light to rear slope. Roof behind parapet wall. Pitched tiled roof to rear extension. Red brick facade laid in Flemish bond, with cement re-pointing, granite quoins, and having rendered entablature to parapet. Smooth render to north gable. Red brick canted bay windows with rendered parapets. Segmental-headed window openings with bullnose brick reveals and granite sills set within canted bay windows, having replacement uPVC windows. Stilted segmental-headed brick arch door opening with chamfered brick reveals, painted stone doorcase comprising tapering columns with Doric capitals supporting segmental-headed entablature with decorative keystone having open heart and anthemion motifs to face and flower-head to soffit. Flower-head band to soffit of architrave. Doorcase surrounds timber door frame with raised-and-fielded panelled door and rolled glass over-light. Door opens to granite steps and granite plinth walls. Brick paving to front site. Front of site bounded to footpath by painted granite plinth wall with wrought-iron railings and pedestrian gate having fleur-de-lys finials. Cast-iron vine-detailed uprights flanking to gate. Square-plan red and yellow brick piers with granite pyramidal caps to each end of railings. Piers and railings similar in style to those of adjacent Saint Francis Xavier National Schools.
Appraisal
Dorset College occupies a good late nineteenth-century house on the west side of Dorset Street. Although attached it reads as a detached house, unique within its immediate setting where the streetscape is dominated by earlier terraced shop-fronted buildings. It is enhanced by its fine doorcase and canted bay windows. The doorcase uses neoclassical devices such as columns and an entablature, but it is stylised with a decorative keystone and a flower-head band to the soffit of the architrave’s segmental arch.