This is a street view of 20 & 22 Victoria Road, Penarth, in South Wales, two semi-detached houses designed by John Coates Carter, Grade II listed, also known as St Margaret's. Based in Penarth, the architect designed the houses for himself (No. 20), and his mother & sister (No. 22), although he would also build a much more individualistic house for himself at Red House on the same road. The plans were drawn up in June 1892. Photograph by Colin Cheesman, originally posted on the British Listed Buildings site, and reproduced, with thanks, on a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence. It has been slightly modified to remove shadows. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
In the kind of free Arts and Crafts style that Coates Carter adopted, the houses have two storeys and an attic floor. Coflein's site record describes it in this way: "Rendered first floor above red brick ground floor; slate hipped gablet roof, red brick chimneys. Central chimney stack; unusual L-shaped stack to L; further stack to R. Centrally placed pair of broad flat-roofed dormers."
Note the comment here, "unusual L-shaped stack to L." Phil Thomas writes that "Coates Carter’s works have tended to puzzle critics, who regarded them as being too restlessly wayward, too eccentric, or too distant from the mainstream of British architecture to be easily categorised." However, such touches gave even his private houses on residential streets like this, where eccentricity would have been out of place, a unique touch. These semis are substantial without being showy, and the varied window styles, oriels, small-paned, and differenty sized, also give the front elevation an appealing informality. — Jacqueline Banerjee, with some information from Michael Slater
Bibliography
22 Victoria Road Penarth. Coflein (The online catalogue of archaeology, buildings, industrial and maritime heritage in Wales). Web. 30 October 2024.
St Margarets. British Listed Buildings. Web. 30 October 2024.
Thomas, Phil. "John Coates Carter Building a Sense of Place." www.building conservation.com. Web. 30 October 2024.
Created 30 October 2024