Description

ARGYLE STREET
(North side)

Nos. 1-5 (Consec)
(Formerly Listed as: ARGYLE STREET
(North side) Nos.1-7 (Consec))
12/06/50

GV II

Shops with accommodation over, forming a symmetrical terrace between Pulteney Bridge and Grove Street and the Great Pulteney Street development. c1789 with C19 and C20 alterations. By Thomas Baldwin.
MATERIALS: Bath limestone ashlar, part painted, with Welsh slate roofs.
PLAN: Double depth.
EXTERIOR: Three storeys, attics and basement storeys, fifteen bays in all, three to each house, articulated three:nine:three. Endmost houses break forward and are taller, forming flanking pavilions. Central window with semicircular head and decorated entablature. The additional height is in this first floor room. Sash windows in plain reveals, all late C19 glass, except for No. 5 which has restored late C18 type sashes, six/nine on first floor and six/six above. All the first floor windows have dropped sills, as do the second floor ones of No. 5. Second floor sill band, broken to No.5. Ground floor shopfronts all C20, Nos.1 and 5 have projecting `character' ones, of which the double fronted one to No.1 is the best. No.1 has an 1889 surround by Browne and Gill with later alterations; No.2 has a 1919 one by Wills and Sons; No.3 has a 1925 one by FJ Amery and Son; No.5 has half of a mid C19 one extended in modern times by James Elliot. None of the original house doorways survive, see Nos. 8-17 (qv) opposite. Cornice, parapet, mansard roof with paired flat topped dormer to each house, plate glass sashes, stone stacks, with pots to Nos. 4 and 5 only. No.1 has a return elevation to the north side of Pulteney Bridge, rubble with random windows of various periods. No.5 has a return elevation to Grove Street, ashlar, plain doorway, first floor platband, randomly placed six/six sashes, parapet with band. Rear elevations are rubble with ashlar dressings except No.5 which is ashlar, painted to lower ground floor. No.1 has a visually important rear elevation with a triple window to each floor, and a paired dormer, all plate glass sashes. Various extensions and sash windows to others; all with restored glazing bars to No.5, which is important visually over the through way of Spring Gardens Road. This through way may originally have been a waterway or mill leat, as old maps suggest.
INTERIORS: not inspected.
HISTORY: Argyle Street, first Argyle Buildings, was the extension of the line of Adam's Pulteney Bridge (qv) into Sir William Pulteney's Bathwick estate. The estate passed to his daughter Henrietta Laura in 1792, but building work had already begun on Laura Place in 1788. This terrace, with its southern opposite number, forms a monumental extension northwards from Robert Adam¿s Pulteney Bridge. No.1 was the offices of the Bath Argus in 1906. No. 5 was T Gibbons' circulating library in the C19, and became George Gregory, Bookseller in 1906 (see remaining painted sign on north return elevation).
SOURCES: Graham Finch, Shop front Record (Bath City Council 1992).

Listing NGR: ST7521364983

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26673255

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Oxfordshire: North and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  The Victorian House Manual (2nd Edition): How They Were Built, Improvements & Refurbishment, Solutions to All Common Defects - Includes Relevant ... ... Properties (Haynes Manual) (Haynes Manuals)
• 
  Kent: North East and East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Yorkshire West Riding: Leeds, Bradford and the North (Pevsner Architectural Guides / Buildings of England)
• 
  London 3: North West: North West v. 3 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Wiltshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)