Summary
Terrace of four houses, built during the 1820s and later converted to flats.
Reasons for Designation
187-193 Oxford Road, Reading, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* as an early-C19 building 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 named Castle Street/Castle Hill/Bath Road. Inns and some isolated dwellings probably existed on these roads before the C18. 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. John Rocque’s Map of Berkshire (1761) depicts ribbon development along Castle Hill/Bath Road extending as far as the junction with Tilehurst Road, and individual houses within grounds along Oxford Road about as far as the present-day location of Russell Street. More comprehensive development of the area began in the early C19 and progressed gradually over the 100 years. Development spread further along Castle Street/Castle Hill, with some of the earlier buildings depicted on Rocque’s map seemingly replaced. North-south link roads also were laid out across the market gardens that previously existed between Oxford Road and Bath Road. Terraced housing was erected in considerable quantities during the first half of the century to cater for a variety of social groups.
187-193 Oxford Road is a terrace of four townhouses constructed in the 1820s during the westward expansion of Reading’s inner suburbs. The developer may have been William Pratt Swallow, a member of a prominent local family, and was originally named Sydney Terrace, along with the listed terraces at 149-169 and 171-177 Oxford Road to the east (Pevsner and Bradley, p477; Conservation Area Appraisal, p59, p128).
The buildings appear to have remained in largely residential use throughout their history, with some small-scale commercial uses in the late C20.
The 1875 OS map of Reading shows that the four houses uniformly had a small outshot along their eastern boundaries, which may have been part of the original design. As the end of the terrace, number 193 occupied a wider plot than the other houses, and there was a smaller building adjoining number 193 to the west. A newspaper article of 1916 describes number 193 as having stabling, which may indicate the original use of this smaller, western element of the building (Reading Mercury, 25 March 1916, p5). The 1875 map also shows that the buildings had substantial rear gardens, with number 191 having a full-width outbuilding facing onto the lane along the back of the houses, today named Prospect Mews. The external form of the terrace changed very little over the following century, with the OS map of 1971 showing that the rear outshot at 187-191 had been modestly enlarged, and full-width garages had been constructed at the end of the rear gardens of the same properties. A further garage was added at the end of the garden of number 193 sometime after 1971.
In the early 1990s, the terrace was extensively remodelled and extended to convert the four townhouses and smaller building adjoining number 193 into a series of flats. The most significant change was the addition of three-storey, rear extensions along the western boundary of each building, replacing the earlier outshot, along with a full-height, full-width extension to the rear of the two-storey building to the west of number 193, whose north elevation onto Oxford Road appears to have been rebuilt at this time. Additional changes appear to have included the introduction of arrowhead railings along the entire front boundary of the terrace, the removal of any boundaries between the front gardens of the buildings and the paving of this space. The extent of internal alteration is unknown.
Despite this significant phase of work, all four buildings appear to retain historic windows, doors and detailing. Between 2009 and 2017, the multi-paned sash windows at the raised ground-, first- and second-floor levels at number 187 were replaced in phases with two-pane sashes. The garages on Prospect Mews, at the ends of the properties’ rear gardens, now appear to be under separate ownership.
Details
Terrace of four houses, built during the 1820s and later converted to flats.
MATERIALS: the terrace is of red brick in Flemish bond and a slate roof covering, with a stucco plat band and late-C20 iron railings to the front area.
EXTERIORS: the terrace comprises four townhouses of three storeys plus a basement across three bays onto Oxford Road, under a hipped roof punctuated by ridgeline chimney stacks on the western party wall of each building.
The four houses are of matching design. Basements have a door in the central bay, accessed via steps down from the front area, and a window in the western bay. The doors are recent (late C20 or C21) replacements, while the windows are three-over-three sashes with the exception of that at number 187, which is a uPVC, two-pane sash, installed after 2009.
The door is accessed via a flight of steps from the street with iron handrails. The main entrance is located in the easternmost bay of the raised ground floor and comprises a six-panelled door within a rendered, round-arched recess with a moulded band between the door and a patterned fanlight containing the number of each house. To the west of the front door are two window openings with flat-arched heads and stucco cills. There are three window openings with gauged brickwork heads and stucco cills at the first and second floors, with the central opening on the second floor being blocked, likely as part of the original design. All of the windows at the ground floor and above are sash windows (six-over-six at the ground and first floor, three-over-three at second floor), except at number 187, where they are recently installed (post-2009), uPVC two-pane sashes. A plat band runs across the entire frontage at first-floor cill height.
There are matching, three-storey extensions in brick with pitched roofs to the rear of each building, added during the 1990s. The two lower floors of the rear façade of the main house are rendered. There are single windows at the basement, ground and first floors, and three at second-floor level, some of which are sashes. The rear gardens of all four houses are joined, with numbers 191 and 193 retaining a greater proportion of the historic extent of their gardens than numbers 187 and 189.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: the front areas of all four houses are unified and paved, and there is a continuous line of arrowhead railings along the entire front boundary.
