Summary
Terrace of six houses, built in the early C19, now flats and houses.
Reasons for Designation
134-144 Castle Hill, Reading, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* as an early-C19 terrace which contributes to the character of an architecturally varied historic streetscape.
Group value:
* the building is in close proximity to a large number of listed buildings and forms part of a strong historic grouping.
History
Until the C19 most of the land west of Reading town centre was open farmland crossed by two ancient routes passing through the town from London to the West Country. Today, the northern of these two roads is named Oxford Road, while the southern is Castle Street/Castle Hill/Bath Road. Fortifications were built throughout the area by Royalist forces garrisoned in the town during the Civil War with some of the earthworks surviving into the early C19. From the early C18, development slowly began to spread westward along Castle Hill/Bath Road and Oxford Road. More comprehensive development of the area began in the early C19 and progressed gradually over the following 100 years. Terraced housing was erected in considerable quantities during the first half of the C19 to cater for a variety of social groups.
134-144 Castle Hill is a terrace of six houses which was built during the early C19 during the western growth of Reading’s inner suburbs. The building does not appear on Coates’ map of 1802, while some stylistic features, such as the oval windows on the second floor, are typical of Regency architecture. The terrace is labelled as ‘Jesse Place’ on the 1879 Ordnance Survey map jointly with 1-23 Heritage Court (formerly 144A-152 Castle Street) and may have been constructed by the Jesse family who were responsible for much of Reading’s western suburban expansion during the early- to mid-C19. The terrace was originally faced in Bath Stone, although this was removed and replaced with Bath Stone-coloured stucco in the 1960s. Aside from this refacing, the terrace appears to have been very little altered externally since its construction. The houses possess single-storey lean-tos on their rear (north) elevations, which were extant by 1879 and which may be original in part. The houses retain their large planted front gardens although the low boundary walls are mainly C19 or C20. At some time in the later C20, number 134 was converted into two flats. The rest of the properties remain as individual residences.
Details
Terrace of six houses, built in the early C19, now flats and houses.
MATERIALS AND PLAN: the building’s principal (southern) façade is of Bath Stone-coloured stucco, while the other elevations are of red brick in Flemish bond. The ground floor of the western elevation is of grey-coloured render, scored to imitate masonry. The roof covering is slate. Three storeys with basement.
EXTERIOR: the building is a symmetrical terrace designed in a neoclassical Regency style. The Castle Hill frontage has twelve bays under a hipped roof with two bays to each house. The roof over sails beyond the four elevations with a plain timber soffit visible at street level and shallow gabled bays which project slightly to the street front of numbers 136 and 142. There are four chimney stacks placed in two pairs on the roof ridge on either side of the gables at numbers 136 and 142. The ground floor of the Castle Hill frontage comprises a series of round-arched openings, while the first floor of each property contains two, square-headed, six-over-six sash windows. The two central properties and two end properties have an oval window on the second floor, while the penultimate houses have a glazing bar sash window on the second floor beneath the shallow gables. The end houses are accessed from the flanks of the terrace with two, round-headed windows to the ground floor of the Castle Hill Frontage.
The eastern side of number 134 has a projecting, gabled brick porch. Number 144 has a render to the ground floor of its west front with brick walling above and its main entrance by a six-panelled front door within a reeded timber surround under a sunburst fanlight – this composition appears to be consistent throughout the rest of the properties. On the ground floor of each is a round-arched doorway and a single, round-headed sash window. The two central properties are slightly asymmetrical, with number 140 being slightly wider than number 138. The ground floor of number 140 contains two round-headed sash windows and a round-arched main entrance matching those throughout the terrace, placed centrally within the elevation, while the ground floor of number 138 is of similar composition but with one round-headed sash window rather than two.
The rear (north) elevation is of exposed red brickwork in Flemish bond and contains a variety of sash windows, generally of six-over-six glazing on the first floor and three-over-six at second-floor level. The brick string course, at the height of first-floor sill on the road front, continues around the building. Apart from number 134, each property has a single-storey brick lean-to with slate roof on the rear elevation, which vary in size. There is a shoulder-height red brick wall along the western boundary of 144 Castle Hill which appears to be of Victorian origin.
