Survey Data

Reg No

50060475


Rating

Regional


Categories of Special Interest

Architectural, Historical


Original Use

House


Date

1780 - 1800


Coordinates

316686, 235098


Date Recorded

23/09/2014


Date Updated

--/--/--


Description

Terraced two-bay three-storey house over basement, built c.1790, with timber shopfront to ground floor. Built as single building with house to northeast. M-profile pitched slate roof with terracotta ridge tiles. Roof set behind parapet wall with granite coping. Machine-cut red brick facade, laid in Flemish bond. Square-headed window openings with brick reveals and voussoirs, granite sills and two-over-two pane timber sliding sash windows with ogee horns. Lower sashes of two windows at first floor level replaced with salvaged six-over-six pane and two-over-two pane sashes. Shopfront has stall-riser with sill, display window with wire mesh protection, paned over-light, plain pilasters and fascia, and missing console brackets and cornice. Square-headed door openings with over-lights timber panelled doors, that to shop being double-leaf and having paned over-light. Doors open to granite flagstone. Steel panel over basement area opening.

Appraisal

Amiens Street, formerly The Strand, was renamed in memory of Viscount Amiens, Earl of Aldborough, whose mansion is located on nearby Portland Row. This terraced house, one of a pair, on the north side of Amiens Street appears to have been constructed during the late eighteenth century. The facade's machine-cut brick, typical of the late nineteenth century, represents the advances in building technology of the Victorian period and such brick, with its smooth and uniform finish, could be produced quickly and on a mass scale. This differed greatly from the production of handmade bricks which had been used in construction before that age. The house and its pair have modest timber shopfronts, which are becoming a rare feature in a rapidly changing city. The premises was run by Thomas Clarke, Easter Rising leader (executed May 1916) as a tobacconist shop from 1909.