Description

MALMESBURY

ST9386 KINGS WALL 758-1/3/234 (South West side) 18/01/49 Nos.34 AND 38 Kings House and attached garden and front terrace walls and railings (Formerly Listed as: KINGS WALL (West side) Nos.34-38 King Athelstan's House)

GV II*

House and attached W and rear wings, now 2 houses. c1705, extended to W early C18. Limestone rubble and dressings with ashlar and brick gable and rear external stacks and stone slate roof. Main elevation provincial Baroque style. PLAN: L-shaped plan with single-depth plan main house and left-hand wing, with rear right-hand service wing. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys, attic and basement; 3-window range with 5-window side wing. Rusticated quoins, strings to each floor, deep cornice, a fine balustrade with panelled dies to the main house and parapet to the side wing. Main house has a good doorway with cushion brackets to a shell hood, a late C20 door with 6 raised panels and rectangular overlight. Raised, keyed surrounds with segmental-arched heads to outer first- and second-floor windows and central round-arched first-floor window, to probably original 6/6-pane sashes with thick glazing bars; 2 dormers behind balustrade, which has a central panel with Malmesbury arms; right-hand 1-window return has mullion windows. W wing has a left-hand doorway with half-glazed door, cross windows with cyma mouldings and relieving arches to leaded metal casements with stay bars and original fittings, and a central segmental-arched heraldic panel; coped left-hand gable with former stack and front balustrade. The rear 3-window elevation has cross windows in the left-hand gable and at each end of the side wing, a large right of centre external stack, with a smaller lateral stack to the left above a range of blocked cross windows. INTERIOR: details include a collar truss roof with lap dovetail collars and threaded ridge. A good right-hand winder stair with plank door to the attic, second-floor front room with bolection-moulded fire surround and plank and muntin panelling, good panelled first-floor front room including an early C19 fire surround with fluted pilasters and entablature

with triglyphs and flanking shell-headed cupboards, the left-hand one with concealed sliding door, and a dentil cornice. Entrance stair hall remodelled early C19 with reeded architraves and roundels, moulded beams, a left-hand rear dogleg winder stair with stick balusters and column newels. The W wing details include a right-hand rear stair well with a mid C20 newel stair, and chamfered ceiling beams, central first-floor room with fully-panelled sides and cornice and a good fire surround with carved leafs, ground-floor room beneath has panelling and plank and muntin screen; basement has large bressumer to fireplace. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: attached rubble walls round front garden and to full-width terrace in front of wing with wrought-iron railings to right-hand steps. HISTORICAL NOTE: probably built by Mr Thomas, Town Clerk to the Old Corporation; the Town Arms with the Padenham and Yeoman families being over the entrance facade. An exceptionally fine and interesting early C18 town house, the sash windows being very early examples and the cross windows being used in the lesser status elevations.



Listing NGR: ST9327286977

External Links

• Wikidata Q17544373

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Recommended Books

• 
  For the Record
• 
  Cork: City and County (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  [(Cumberland and Westmorland)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1967)
• 
  Huddersfield in 50 Buildings
• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)
• 
  Herefordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)