Survey Data
Reg No
50100526
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Artistic
Original Use
House
In Use As
Apartment/flat (converted)
Date
1800 - 1830
Coordinates
316967, 233480
Date Recorded
06/08/2016
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Attached two-bay four-storey former house over basement, built c. 1815 as one in terrace (Nos. 15-21), having bowed bay to east end of rear elevation, and one, two and three-storey flat-roofed returns to rear. Converted for use as offices and apartments. Pitched roof to front span, hipped to west end, behind brick parapet with granite coping, with two unequal hipped roofs to rear, larger over bow, and having terracotta ridge tiles. Shouldered rendered chimneystacks to east with clay pots. Parapet gutters, and replacement aluminium downpipe to rear. Flemish bond buff brick walling, rebuilt to top floor, on granite plinth over painted smooth-rendered basement walling; English garden wall bond buff brick to rear; smooth rendered walling to return. Square-headed window openings, diminishing in height to upper floors, with patent reveals and painted granite sills, with round-headed stairs window to west end of rear. Replacement six-over-six pane timber sliding sash windows with ogee horns to ground and first floors and replacement timber windows to top floors above and to basement, latter with steel grille. Multiple-pane timber sliding sashes to rear (some apparently replacement), some eight-over-eight pane. Round-headed doorcase with painted moulded surround, entablature with fluted frieze and moulded cornice on columns with Adamesque Ionic capitals, spoked fanlight and timber door with two round-headed bolection-moulded panels and brass furniture. Granite entrance platform with broken boot-scrape and five steps to street. Basement area enclosed by wrought-iron railings with decorative cast-iron posts on moulded granite plinth. Rear of plot has small garden, with carparking otherwise.
Appraisal
A late Georgian house that was apparently built as part of a terrace. Although there has been some insertion of replacement fabric, principally the windows, the group displays elegant proportions, a graded fenestration pattern, and setting features typical of the period. Salient features include the bowed bays to the rear elevations and the neo-Classical doorcases featuring Adamesque capitals. This well-retained building is an important component of the surviving Georgian streetscape character of Mount Street Lower, a street that has been heavily impacted by the construction of late twentieth-century office blocks. Initial approval to open Mount Street Lower was obtained from the Wide Streets Commissioners in 1791, with the principal developers, Crosthwaite and Grant, having purchased land from Samuel Sproule. Although their building efforts were praised in 1796, building was halted until the early nineteenth century, due to recession, and progressed slowly with only 29 houses completed by 1834.