Blenheim Terrace, 97-105 Castle Street

Summary

A terrace of five houses, some now subdivided into flats, built in the late C18 or early C19.

Reasons for Designation

Blenheim Terrace, 97-105 Castle Street is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as a late-C18 or early-C19 building which contributes to the character of an architecturally varied 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 next 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.

The five-house terrace known as Blenheim Terrace was built around the turn of the C19 as the development of Reading’s inner suburbs began to spread further west. The terrace appears to be depicted on Coates’ Map of Reading of 1802. The properties appear to have remained in residential use since their construction and have been very little altered externally. Sometime during the 1980s or 1990s, the rear gardens of the properties were replaced with a car park. Several of the houses now appear to have been subdivided into flats. The terrace is one of the few remaining Bath Stone-faced buildings in Reading, of which there were historically many more.

Details

Terrace of five houses, built in the late C18 or early C19.

MATERIALS AND PLAN: the building is constructed of red brick with a Bath Stone façade onto Castle Hill, a roof covering of slate and iron railings to the front areas. Three storeys plus basement.

EXTERIOR: the terrace comprises five identical houses each two bays wide. Numbers 97 and 105, at either end of the terrace, project slightly forward. The entire front (north) elevation is of Bath Stone. The terrace is accessed from a raised walkway set back from the modern pavement. Each front door is approached by a flight of steps contained by dwarf walls that bridge the basement light wells; red brick walls support the right side of each dwarf wall. In general, the dwarf walls are surmounted by an iron balustrade topped by a flat handrail on the left-hand side and spearhead railings on the right-hand side. The basements have a separate gated entrance to the front, defined by a coped brick wall topped by decorative railings.

The ground floor of each property comprises two round-arched recesses, the eastern containing a round-arched sash window and the western containing a three-panelled door under a fanlight with a decorative, batwing glazing bar pattern. All five front doors appear to be original along with most of the windows across the front elevation. An impost moulding runs between the round-arched openings of each property at the height of the door heads, while a simple plat band runs between the ground and first floors.

On each property, there are two six-over-six sash windows on the first floor and two three-over-three sash windows on the second floor, with a plat band running between the floors and the allusion of a further band above the second-floor windows in the form of two continuous lines scored into the Bath Stone. The parapet has a small square cornice concealing a hipped slate roof to each property.

The eastern, western and rear (southern) elevations are of red brickwork, although the ground and first floors of the western elevation appear to be rendered and the first-floor plat band is carried around onto this façade in render. The rear elevation contains a regular pattern of timber sash windows (six-over-six on the ground and first floors and two-over-two on the second floor) with stone cills. There are doorways to numbers 97 and 101 accessed via bridges over a continuous basement area. The ground floor of number 105 has a small lean-to extension to the rear.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

38808

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Pevsner, N, Bradley, S, Tyack, G, The Buildings of England: Berkshire, (2010), pp438-440

Websites
Reading Borough Council, History of Reading (2012), accessed 31 July 2023 from https://web.archive.org/web/20120425235452/http:/www.reading.gov.uk/residents/history-ofreading/
Ditchfield, PH, Page, W, A History of the County of Berkshire: Volume 3 (1923), pp336-342, accessed 31 July 2023 from https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/berks/vol3

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