Survey Data

Reg No

50100096


Rating

Regional


Categories of Special Interest

Architectural, Artistic


Original Use

House


In Use As

Office


Date

1730 - 1830


Coordinates

316183, 233825


Date Recorded

11/07/2016


Date Updated

--/--/--


Description

Attached two-bay four-storey former house over basement, built c. 1740, with full-height gable-ended closet return. Now in commercial use. Modified c. 1820. Cruciform-plan replacement slate roof, half-hipped to front and rear ends, and having brown brick parapet with projecting masonry coping, concealed gutters, and replacement uPVC downpipes. Large rendered chimneystack to north party wall. Flemish bond brown brick walling with rudimentary tuck pointing, reconstructed to top floor, and having painted rendered walling to basement and smooth rendered to rear. Square-headed window openings, diminishing in height to upper floors, with painted patent reveals and painted masonry sills, and with basement windows set into camber-headed recesses. Timber sliding sash windows, six-over-six pane to middle floors, two-over-two pane to ground floor with ogee horns, three-over-three pane to top floor, and largely replacement timber casements to rear. Segmental-headed door opening with mid-nineteenth-century doorcase, having bolection mouldings, engaged Ionic columns, entablature with panelled frieze, batwing fanlight, and six-panel timber door with brass furniture and beaded muntin. Cement-paved platform bridging basement with single bull-nosed step to street level, and cast-iron boot-scrape. Basement area enclosed by wrought-iron railings with decorative cast-iron post, on painted moulded granite plinth, with separate entrance gate and recent steel steps.

Appraisal

This mid-eighteenth-century house was originally gable-fronted, the attic storey being built up with a horizontal gable in the early nineteenth century. The Ionic doorcase was probably inserted at the same time. The early roof form and original appearance of the rear elevation are both retained, having a steeply pitched gable and closet return, and such features stand in contrast to the Georgian uniformity and horizontal parapet line of the streetscape and serve as an important physical record of how the city's architecture evolved to suit changing fashions. South Frederick Street was laid out in the 1730s and was largely complete by the 1750s. This stretch of houses have narrow proportions, characteristic of the early eighteenth century. No. 26 forms part of a largely unified Georgian terrace that constitutes one of the most coherent and intact examples in the city of a terrace of formerly gable-fronted houses.