Blandford Forum

5 BLANDFORD FORUM (8806)

(O.S. 6 ins. ST. 80 NE)

Blandford Forum, the largest town described in this volume, stands in a curve of the R. Stour which bounds it to S. and W. The land varies in altitude between 100 ft. and 200 ft. above O.D. and is of Valley Gravel and Chalk. Habitation probably originated in the vicinity of the present Market Place, at the junction of the river terrace and the Chalk declivity. The settlement prospered by reason of its position at the intersection of roads from Poole, Wimborne, Salisbury, Shaftesbury and Dorchester, and from its command of a bridge over the Stour. The parish was formerly more extensive than the present borough; until the 19th century it included the Manors of Nutford, Nutford Lokey and Damory, all of which had mediaeval open fields. Having been partly burned down in 1713 and then almost entirely consumed by a disastrous fire in 1731 Blandford was rebuilt within the space of about thirty years and consequently provides a noteworthy example of an 18th-century market town. The most important building to survive the two fires is the Old House (12), dating from c. 1660. The work of reconstruction was largely guided by the brothers John and William Bastard, master-builders, who on several occasions also filled the office of bailiff or mayor of the town. For brevity we use the term 'post-fire' to denote the period of intense building activity between 1731 and 1766, many details of which are recorded in a contemporary manuscript 'Survey Book' by John Bastard; it is now preserved in D.C.R.O. The Bastards drew up an accurate map showing the extent of the destruction (Plate 104); it shows that the old street plan was retained in the rebuilding, the only important change in lay-out being the enlargement of the Market Place. The work of restoration was regulated by Act of Parliament (5 George III) and, to give effect to the Act, Parliament set up a Court of Record with power to make rules for the rebuilding of the town; a Commission was also established for the just apportionment of the losses incurred and for the distribution of the large sum of money that was publicly subscribed for the relief of the afflicted citizens. The Minutes of the Commissioners' meetings, still preserved by the Borough Council, are another useful source of information. (fn. 1)

The Parish Church, designed by John and William Bastard and finished in 1739, is the principal monument in the town; other important post-fire buildings are the Town Hall (4) and Coupar House (8). The town changed little in the second half of the 18th century, but in the first half of the 19th century the wealthier inhabitants began to build houses to the N., beside the Salisbury road and along the road which branches off it leading to Shaftesbury. Later in the century, perhaps in consequence of the provision of piped water, denser building took place on rising ground to the N.E. between the Wimborne and Salisbury roads, where there had formerly been gardens and where, as Bastard's plan shows, temporary 'Barracks for the Distrest Poor' had been erected in 1731.

Building materials. The surviving pre-fire buildings are mostly of red brick with stone dressings. In the post-fire reconstruction every building was brick-faced, except the Church and the Town Hall which are of stone and the Greyhound Hotel which has a stucco façade. Stone dressings were used only on Coupar House, the largest private house in the town; other brick buildings have quoins, cornices, doorway-surrounds, keystones and other details executed in plaster and wood. Variety was obtained by special brick bonding and by the use of bricks of various colours; for instance dark red brick was often used to outline openings, and quoins and window-heads were sometimes defined by finely-jointed pale red bricks, contrast being provided in each case by building the main wall-face in blue bricks. Flemish bond was generally used in the post-fire period, but a special effect was sometimes obtained by the economical device of using headers only; economical because it enables the builder of use broken bricks. Façades are also diversified by vertical chaînage of brickwork of contrasting colour which connects the openings of one storey with those of another.

Many façades retain traces of false brick jointing applied in white paint to the wall-face, the latter having been coloured red and blue, in correspondence with actual bricks but masking the real joints. Sometimes the painted joints do not exactly correspond with the real ones. It is uncertain if this work is of the 18th or of the early 19th century.

Classification of house-types. Ignoring minor variants, the houses that were built in the post-fire period may be classified in five main groups. The houses of Group (i) were designed for wealthier professional men and leading merchants. They are rectangular in plan and narrow enough to be spanned by a single roof. The ground floor has a central vestibule and staircase, with one room on each side. The vestibule is usually lit by a fanlight over the front door while two sashed windows light each flanking room; the fireplaces are against the end walls of the rectangle and the chimneystacks emerge at the apex of the gables. The first-floor plan is similar to that of the ground floor, with two principal bedrooms; smaller bedrooms are provided in a dormer-windowed attic. Kitchens and service rooms, with other bedrooms above them, occupy a lower wing at the rear or to one side of the main block. The symmetrical façade always has an ornate central doorway, with sashed windows disposed on each side of it and corresponding windows on the first floor. Lime Tree House (9) is an example of this group (Plate 109).

The buildings of Groups (ii) and (iii) were probably designed for occupation by shopkeepers and middle-class families and they are found at the centre of the town, in the Market Place, West Street and at the S. end of Salisbury Street. In every case the ground floor is a shop, whether in origin or by subsequent modification, and the typical plans have to be deduced from the disposition of the upper floors. Many of these houses have three storeys. In Group (ii) the entrance is placed to one side of the façade and opens into a narrow passage which leads to the staircase, set against the back wall of the house; there is one room in front beside the passage and a smaller room behind beside the stairs; on the first floor the front room extends across the ground-floor passage. The houses of Group (iii) have a plan similar to the preceding group except that the staircase, un-lit, rises between the front and rear rooms.

Group (iv) houses were for artisans and are mostly in the E. part of East Street, on the W. side of Salisbury Street and in White Cliff Mill Street. They are built in pairs and share a common service-passage leading through to the rear, from which both dwellings are entered (Plate 115). Each dwelling may have one or two ground-floor rooms; where there are two, the fireplaces are sometimes set corner-wise so as to be served by one chimney-stack. In such pairs of houses one of the tenements is usually bigger than the other so that one wall of the servicepassage may stand half-way between the end-walls, thus supporting the roof purlins with greater economy.

In Group (v) houses the plan of the foregoing group is repeated in a single tenement, which may be with or without its own service-passage; in the latter case the front room is entered from the street. A still simpler version of the artisan's dwelling has only one room on each floor. Wherever possible the inventory will be abbreviated by means of the foregoing system of classification.

Ecclesiastical

(1) The Parish Church of St. Peter and St. Paul (see Frontispiece and drawing facing p. 32) stands at the E. end of the Market Place, on the site of the mediaeval church which perished in the fire of 1731. The new church was designed and built by John and William Bastard; trustees for the rebuilding were nominated in 1733 and the new church was opened in 1739, although work went on for several years after that date. The church has walls of Greensand ashlar with dressings of Portland and Ham Hill stone; the roofs are tiled and of lead. The original design comprised Apse, Nave, North and South Aisles, and a West Tower. The last was originally intended to have a spire but a wooden bell turret was substituted, much to the Bastards' disgust. An organ gallery was installed at the W. end of the nave in 1794, and extended into the western part of the aisles in 1819; in 1837 both aisles were fully galleried. In 1895 the apse was taken down and the Chancel was inserted between the nave and the rebuilt apse; at the same time the organ was transferred to a chamber on the N. side of the chancel.

Blandford Forum parish church is a notable example of Georgian church architecture in the classical style, as interpreted by provincial builder-architects. (For plan, see p. 20.)

Architectural Description—Externally, the nave and aisles are combined in a rectangular structure of Greensand ashlar with Portland stone dressings, defined at the four corners by french quoins and capped by a cornice and parapet. The windows are round-headed, with moulded Portland stone architraves, impost blocks and keystones. Immediately above each window is an oblong panel of knapped flint on the N. and of Ham Hill stone on the other three sides; two panels to the S.E. are enriched with carved fleurs-de-lis. Above the cornice the parapets are interrupted at intervals by Portland stone balustrading. The West Front is broken at the centre by a projecting pedimented bay some 10 ft. higher than the main cornice. In the lower part of the bay is the W. doorway, a round-headed opening with Tuscan pilasters and a horizontal entablature; over this rises a tall W. window with scrolled sides and a segmental hood on scrolled brackets, all of Portland stone. The pediment of the W. front has a bold and simple cornice, the horizontal member being interrupted to make room for a clock-face. Above the central bay of the W. front rises the Tower, square on plan, with rusticated quoins and with a single round-headed and pedimented belfry window in each side; the triple keystones of the belfry window heads extend into the open pediments. The tower entablature is enriched with a heavy modillion frieze; over it is a parapet, lightened with balustrades in the middle of each side and thickened at each corner to form the pedestal of an urn finial. Quoins, cornices, balustrades and urns are of Portland stone. Above the balustrades is a wooden bell-cote, square at the base, with large scrolls set diagonally at the four corners; the scrolls were perhaps intended for the base of the projected spire. Over them rises an octagonal aedicule with round-headed openings on the four major sides and, above, a lead cupola with a weather-vane finial.

In the South Front a projecting central transept is flanked symmetrically by six bays of round-headed windows as described above. The Transept has colossal Portland stone pilasters at the angles and a pedimented Doric entablature with a triglyph frieze; the tympanum contains a sundial and at the apex of the pediment is an urn. The S. doorway, in the centre of the S. front of the transept, has a moulded Portland stone architrave and a horizontal stone hood on console brackets; above, an apron flanked by scrolls forms the base of a rectangular central window with an eared architrave and a keystone that touches the soffit of the Doric entablature.

The East Front was altered in 1895 by the addition of the chancel and the rebuilding of the apse further E. Above the chancel roof the E. wall of the nave is capped by a closed pediment, some 4 ft. higher than the balustraded parapets of the aisle walls and joined therewith by carved stone scrolls which mask the nave roof. The Apse now stands 25 ft. to the E. of its original position; it is flanked by the angle quoins of the modern chancel, which repeat those of the aisles. The apse windows are similar to those of the S. front but smaller.

The North Front repeats that to the south except for simpler treatment of the transept; instead of the Doric order the projection is capped by a return of the N. aisle cornice and parapet; the central doorway and window have relatively plain architraves and keystones; above rises a pedimented attic with a round window at the centre.

Inside, the W. doorway opens into a square Vestibule in the base of the tower; from it arched openings lead into the nave and aisles. The vestibule is ceiled below the level of the W. window and the latter illuminates an upper chamber, with arched recesses to N. and S. and a round-headed window to the E. through which light from the W. window finds its way to the nave.

The Nave (Plate 98) is flanked by Ionic colonnades raised on high pedestals above the level of the former box pews. On each side are an E. end pilaster, five columns with cylindrical stone shafts, and one with a rectangular shaft, the latter engaged in the tower. The fourth intercolumniation from the E. is wider than the others and corresponds with the N. and S. transepts which, although now partitioned off at ground level, formerly opened into the aisles and constituted a cross-axis. The column shafts, each of three stone drums as old photographs show, have capitals with canted volutes; they support entablatures with architraves of two fasciae, plain friezes and modillion cornices. At the W. end of the nave, the window to the upper tower chamber culminates in a keystone enriched with cherubs' heads. At the E. end the pilaster responds are coupled with square columns which support the wide arch at the entry to the chancel, formerly the front of the apse; the intrados is enriched with square coffers enclosing rosettes. Above the cornices of the colonnades the nave has a vaulted plaster ceiling of elliptical cross-section, each bay having a cross-vault which terminates laterally in lunettes. The vault ribs have oak-leaf wreaths and egg-and-dart mouldings, with acanthus bosses at the intersections; that of the fourth bay is larger and richer than the others.

The Aisles are lit by the six windows of the N. and S. walls, by the windows of the N. and S. transepts and by a window in each end wall, except that since 1895 the E. window of the N. aisle has been blocked by the organ chamber. In 1837 the aisles were divided into two storeys by galleries suspended between the colonnades and the outside walls. Below gallery level the N. and S. transepts were walled off and the cross-axis formed by the widened central intercolumniation was to a large extent nullified; however, the transepts remain open in the upper storey and the small galleries which they originally contained are now continuous with the large 19th-century galleries. The original galleries are approached by stone stairs beside the N. and S. doorways. The aisle ceilings (Plate 98) are plaster cross-vaults similar to those of the nave but of shallower elliptical cross-section; they spring from the Ionic architraves, the upper orders of the entablature being omitted on the reverse of the trabeation. The architrave mouldings continue on all four sides of each aisle and also on the E. and W. walls of the transepts but they do not return across the N. and S. sides of the transepts. The ribs of the aisle vaults have mouldings similar to those of the nave.

The Chancel of 1895 has, to the N., a wide opening to the organ chamber; to the S. are two round-headed windows similar to those of the aisles but slightly smaller. In general the architectural ornament of the walls is uniform with that of the apse. The barrel-vaulted roof is decorated with square coffering, each coffer having a central acanthus boss and four angle paterae.

The Apse (Plate 98) is lit by two round-headed windows with splayed reveals, outlined by enriched and gilded plaster architrave mouldings rising from sill fasciae with wave-spiral ornament; the impost moulding at the springing of each window-head has Greek-key decoration and the apex has a foliate spray; the window reveals are coffered, each coffer enclosing a rosette. The apse vault, moved bodily from its original position in 1895, is ornamented with octagonal coffering outlined in egg-and-dart enrichment, and filled with various ornaments such as cherubs' heads and conventional flowers; similar ornaments fill the small lozenge-shaped panels between the octagons. At the apex of the dome is a band of wavespiral ornament and a central sunburst; the keystone of the archivolt is decorated with a trinity of cherub heads.

Fittings—Chests: At W. end of S. aisle, oak bible chest with desk lid, carved front panel including initials T.G. between palms, iron lock and hinges: 17th century. At W. end of N. aisle, plain oak chest 3 ft. long, with moulded skirting and three locks; 18th century. Communion Rail: balusters from 18th-century communion rail, seen in an old photograph, now reset in front desks of modern choir-stalls. Communion Tables: At E. end of S. aisle, of oak, with cabriole legs, enriched fascia, top board moulded and enriched on three sides; c. 1735 and probably the original communion table (Plate 45); in vestry, table with spiral legs and plain stretchers and top; late 17th century. Font: (Plate 27); at W. end of S. aisle, of Portland stone, with gadrooned octagonal bowl on square baluster with flower and formal enrichment, and moulded base; octagonal domed cover, of oak, with carved pine-cone finial; c. 1739. Galleries: W. gallery, added in 1794 in W. bay of nave, with bow-fronted oak-panelled parapet, supported on small wooden Ionic columns; parapet with moulded capping set forward at centre to accommodate painted Royal Arms, q.v. Also N. and S. galleries, inserted in 1837 by John Tulloch of Wimborne, with panelled oak parapets and pine box-pews.

Monuments and Floor-slabs. Monuments: In chancel, (1) of G. W. J. Chard, 1836, wall-tablet by Marshall. In N. aisle, (2) of Mary (Pitt) Whitmarsh, 1753, marble tablet with arms; (3) of John Gannett, 1778, marble tablet in slate surround with urn and arms (Plate 99); (4) of Lucy (Pitt) Baskett, 1764, John Pitt, 1757 and Dr. Christopher Pitt, 1801, marble tablet with Latin inscription and arms; (5) of Christopher Pitt, clerk, 1748, white marble tablet with arms; (6) of Nathaniel Benjafield, 1795 and his wife Ann, 1773, oval plaque with urn finial; (7) of Nicholas Humfrey, 1776, and his wife Cecilia, 1768, veined marble tablet with urn, arms and harpy crest; (8) of Mary Marsh, 1787, and George Marsh, 1713, marble tablet with urn; (9) of Robert Raynes, 1749, and his wife, Elizabeth, 1757, marble tablet with pediment, flame-finials and cartouche-of-arms; (10) of members of the Creech and Bastard families (Plate 99), stone tablet inscribed 'Near this Place Lie the remains of Thomas & lane Creech; the latter dyed 1693; the former 1720, Leaving one Son & one Daughter. Thomas the Son was the Learned, Much admir'd, & much envied Mr Creech, Fellow of All souls Coll: in Oxford: Bridget, the Daughter, was the Wife of Thomas Bastard of this Town. (A man useful, & industrious in his generation, a peaceable, & inoffensive neighbour, and eminent for his Skill in Architecture;) By Whom she had Issue six Sons, and four Daughters; Two of which, Iohn and William, educated In the same Art, rebuilt this Church, the Town Hall, with several other Publick & Private Edifices, And, from a Pious regard for these their Ancestors, erected this monument to supply the place of one destroy'd in the General Conflagration, on the 4th of June, 1731'; (11) of Thomas Waters, 1787, and Elizabeth (Goodenough) Waters, 1807, marble tablet with arms. In S. aisle, (12) of Richard Pulteney, F.R.S., 1801, tablet with urns and arms (Plate 99); (13) of his wife Elizabeth Pulteney, 1820, tablet by Hiscock of Blandford; (14) of Robert Lewen, 1752, variegated marble tablet (Plate 99); (15) of William Milbourne, 1760, and others of same family, marble tablet with arms; (16) of William Pitt, 1730, and others of same family, baroque cartouche with arms (Plate 99); (17) of Thomas Edward Baker, 1833, tablet by Patent Works, Westminster; (18) of Robert Williams, 1757, marble tablet with painted arms of William of Herrington, now almost erased; (19) of William Sollars, 1816, oval tablet representing hand holding scroll, by Hiscock of Blandford; (20) of John Bastard, 1809, and his wife, Isabella, 1811, sarcophagusshaped tablet with urn, by Hiscock and son; (21) of John Dennett, 1772, and others of same family, marble tablet with arms; (22) of William Wake, 1705, and Amy his wife, 1673, parents of Archbishop Wake, obelisk-shaped monument evidently erected after 1731 (Plate 99); (23) of Thomas Lacy, 1815, and his wife Alice, 1812, marble cartouche by Marshall. In churchyard, numerous 18th and early 19th-century stones, none earlier than the fire; the most important, (24) of members of the Bastard family (Plate 102); table-tomb with moulded plinth and top, extended at one end to form the base of an obelisk dated 1769, each figure, surrounded by a wreath, occupying one side of the needle; W. side inscribed 'To the memory of John Bastard aged 82, of William Bastard aged 77, whose skill in architectural and liberal benefactions to this town well deserve to be publickly recorded'; S. side of table-tomb inscribed 'This obelisk is erected by their nephews Thomas Bastard Sen'r. and Thomas Bastard Jun'r. the said John Bastard and William Bastard are the same persons mentioned on a monument erected for that family in the south aisle of this church'; on N. side 'To the memory of Thomas Bastard of this town died November the 12th 1771 aged 51'. Floor-slabs: In nave, (1) of Mary McCombe, 1762; (2) of John Curson, 1795, white marble slab; (3) of Elizabeth Pitt, date hidden. In N. aisle, (4) of William Pitt, 1755; (5) illegible, 1755; (6) of Richard Steyner, 18th–century. In S. aisle, (7) vault of I. K. Caplin; (8) of John White, 1769; (9) of… . Hoare.

Hatchment: of painted canvas in moulded wooden surround with lozenge-of-arms of Ryves. Organ: (Plate 100) built in 1794 by England (Salisbury Journal, Sept. I, 1794), moved in 1895 from W. gallery to N. side of chancel; wooden case decorated with classical mouldings and acanthus carving, with royal crown as central finial and Prince of Wales's crest on each side. Panelling: In apse, oak dado with fielded panels with enriched borders and enriched cornice; 18th century. Plate: includes silver cup, paten and flagon with hall-marks of 1731 and 1732; cup engraved with arms of Pitt; paten inscribed 'The gift of Mrs Elizabeth Pitt, relict of ye late Dr. Christopher Pitt of Blandford'; flagon inscribed 'The gift of Mr. Charles Pitt of Pimperne'. Pulpit: (Plate 100) of oak, formerly in St. Antholin's, London (The Builder, Jan. 10, 1880); hexagonal, with raised panels with acanthus enrichment on five sides; ledge similarly enriched and breaking forward at angles above foliate brackets; late 17th century, base and stairs c. 1895. Reredos: In apse, of carved and gilded oak, reset and made 2 ft. higher than formerly by adding to height of column pedestals; on each side, three-quarter Corinthian columns with gilt enrichment supporting pedimented entablature; tympanum with gilded cherub heads and corona with gilt foliage; above, on shaped and panelled pedestal with festoons at corners, free-standing Pelican-in-Piety and flanking urns; between columns, panel with gilded egg-and-dart border, and carved fruit and flower festoons above; panel now enclosing modern painting but originally with text of Lord's Prayer and Creed (Hutchins I, 224).

Royal Arms: painted on square panel at centre of W. gallery, with cypher of George III and date 1794. Seating: In nave and aisles, oak-panelled pews, originally box-pews rising to level of column pedestals, remodelled and cut down to present height in 1880. In third intercolumniation of S. side of nave, ordinary arrangement of pews, interrupted to make way for ornate Mayor's Seat (Plate 101) in which two parallel benches upholstered in red velvet face each other on either side of main chair, of oak, with seat, scrolled arm-rests and back upholstered in velvet; vertical oak posts on each side of chair back flanked by carved cheek-pieces in two orders, richly ornamented with scrolls, acanthus foliage and swags of fruit; uprights support foliate consoles enriched with flower festoons, and segmental hood, coffered on underside; space between top of chair back and hood filled with pierced and carved panel displaying town arms and, on reverse, carved date 1748.

Tables of Decalogue: At W. end of nave, two round-headed panels with moulded architraves, scrolled and foliate cheekpieces on either side and gilt lettering on black background. In N. and S. aisles, painted Beatitudes on wood panels with rounded heads and moulded surrounds.

(2) St. Leonard's Chapel (89060647), on the E. boundary of the parish, is a half-ruined 15th-century building now used as a barn (Plate 114). The E. wall and the eastern part of the N. and S. walls survive. The masonry is partly of flint and partly of squared rubble alternating with triple courses of knapped flint, with ashlar dressings and quoins at the N.E. and S.E. corners, and with put-log holes outlined in ashlar at regular intervals. The roof is modern. Internally the walls are of coursed clunch with random flint courses. The 'chapel' is notable as the only mediaeval building to survive in the parish. It probably originated as an infirmary.

The E. wall has a casement-moulded window of three cinquefoil lights with vertical tracery in a two-centred head; to the S. is a modern doorway. The N. wall has, to the E., a window of two lights with vertical tracery in a segmental-pointed head; further W. is a doorway with a two-centred wave-moulded head and continuous jambs; both openings have timber beams in place of rear-arches; the doorway is blocked. The S. wall is uniform with the N., but the head and tracery of the window have perished; W. of the doorway is one jamb of another S. window. Drawings of 1791 and 1859 (Dorchester Museum, Shipp Album I) show that the N. and S. walls were formerly symmetrical, with central doorways flanked by uniform windows. The W. part of the building has disappeared.

Secular

(3) Blandford Bridge (Plate 51) carries the road from Blandford to Dorchester across the R. Stour, ½ m. S. of the town. The main bridge, with six arches, is separated from the town by a belt of water-meadow, across which the road is carried on a causeway and two other bridges respectively of two and three arches. All three bridges are of Greensand with a certain amount of brown Heathstone, especially on the W. side. The main bridge is mentioned in the Quarter Sessions records of 1631 as being in need of repair, and similar references occur throughout the 17th century. In 1726 an order was made for the bridge to be thoroughly restored and for a causeway to be built across the adjacent marsh; £115 was paid for this work in the following year. In 1783 William Moulton contracted to repair and widen 'the Blandford Bridges' for £840, and in 1812 William Bushrod undertook to rebuild the E. side of the bridge for £2,450.

In the main six-arch bridge the two central openings are slightly higher, and the two outside openings slightly lower than the intermediate ones. Triangular cut-waters with weathered pyramidal tops project from both sides. All spans have plain archivolts with projecting keystones. Above the keystones continuous ashlar plat-bands follow the rise of the arches, and above these are ashlar parapet walls with weathered copings. The intrados of each arch is divided into three zones by offsets and straight joints running in the direction of the road. The lateral zones are about 4½ ft. wide; the inner zones are about 14 ft. wide and all but one of them are constructed of smaller and less carefully jointed ashlar than the lateral zones. The central part of the N. arch (Plate 114) is supported on four chamfered ribs of Heathstone, probably a vestige of the bridge which existed before 1726, and perhaps mediaeval. The two causeway bridges resemble the main bridge except that the E. sides have been rebuilt in concrete.

(4) The Town Hall (Plate 106) stands on the N. side of the Market Place; it is signed and dated 'Bastard, Architect, 1734' in the entablature of the central window. It replaces the former Town Hall, destroyed by the fire of 1731, which stood on an island site to the south of the present building (Plate 104). The two-storied elevation is of Portland stone ashlar. On the ground floor is an open loggia of three semicircular arches, with moulded archivolts and plain keystones, on rectangular piers with lightly moulded imposts. A moulded string-course runs immediately above the arcade. The first-floor windows have moulded architraves, pulvinated friezes with foliate enrichment, and pediments, that of the centre window being curved; the sills are continued as a string across the elevation. At the top of the façade is an enriched modillion cornice of wood and a pediment with a clock in the tympanum; three stone vases complete the composition.

The ground-floor arcade opens into a stone-flagged loggia, known as the Shambles and originally part of the market; its ceiling is supported on two Doric columns, axial with the piers of the façade. An archway at the back of the Shambles leads to the staircase, which rises to the first floor against the E. wall and is lit at first-floor level by a round-headed window in the N. wall. The present stairs are of the mid 19th century; beside them is the entrance to a late 19th-century assembly hall, the Corn Exchange.

On the first floor, a courtroom extends across the front of the building and corresponds with the loggia below. Behind the courtroom lie two compartments; the staircase to the E. and the Council Chamber to the W. The latter has three windows in the N. wall, a doorway from the staircase, and another doorway leading into the W. part of the courtroom. There is a fireplace in the S. wall. The Courtroom is plainly decorated. The E. wall contains a fireplace framed by a plain eared architrave of wood; at either end of the N. wall are the doorways to the stairs and Council Chamber; between them is a blind archway with pilasters and a moulded archivolt. The principal feature is the Magistrates' Bench, filling the W. end of the room in a long shallow curve from wall to wall, with the chairman's seat in the centre, the whole being raised upon a wooden platform with a panelled front. The wooden bench rests on short Doric columns, and a high back is formed by ten fielded panels, five on each side of the chairman's seat; the latter is distinguished by its round-headed raised and fielded back-panel with a triple keystone at the top, and a pedimentcanopy on scroll brackets. The seat has scrolled arm-rests supported on vase-shaped uprights.

Civic Insignia, etc: (i) Small Mace (1²/3 ft. long) silver, parcel gilt over an iron core, not hallmarked (Plate 103). A drum-shaped head embossed with fleurs-de-lis, with a tapering neck, meets the plain shaft at a raised band from which three scrolled brackets rise to support the head. The top of the head is a disc of silver with the Stuart royal arms, initials C.R. and the Garter motto. The shaft has a spherical knop with incised radial lines and a grip with wavy serrated flanges. On the lower part of the shaft is engraved Donum Lodovici Argentyne Ar: 1609 (sic) with shield of Argentyne, three covered cups. (ii) Great Mace (3¼ ft. long), silver-gilt, by WG., with London hallmark of 1769; with a crowned head, a plain shaft with a knop decorated with embossed acanthus foliage, and a trumpet-shaped grip similarly embossed (Plate 103). Inscribed on the lower part of the shaft, 'Robert Biggs Gent Bailiff 1770'. The head meets the shaft at a circlet of bay-leaves; the bowl has embossed cornucopias and floral decoration forming two oval panels, one with the arms of George III, the other with the arms of the borough, i.e., the shield of the Duchy of Lancaster. (iii) Borough Seal, silver (1½ ins. in diameter) with a turned ivory handle; probably late 18th or early 19th-century (Plate 103); the shield of the Duchy of Lancaster is flanked by ostrich plumes and is surrounded by the inscription SIGILLVM BVRGENTIVM VILLAE DE BLANDFORD FORVM. (iv) Royal Arms of George II, painted on canvas in moulded wooden frames, two panels; one on E. wall of courtroom, the other on E. wall of staircase. (v) Chest, wood, with scrolled iron reinforcement and three hasps, 17th-century, (vi) Pillory, in the Shambles, wooden cross-piece with apertures for the neck and wrists supported on a wooden Tuscan column, 18th-century.

(5) Fire Monument (Plate 102), commemorating the fire of 1731, stands at the E. end of the Market Place against the churchyard wall. It was designed by John Bastard and was erected in 1760 at a cost of £66 os. 5d. (Bastard's Survey Book, D.C.R.O.). Two free-standing columns support a pedimented Roman Doric entablature with the date 1760 on the tympanum. The rear wall, of ashlar, with terminal pilasters to correspond with the columns, bears the following inscription: 'In REMEMBRANCE of God's dreadful Visitation by FIRE which broke out the 4th June 1731, and in few Hours reduced, not only the CHURCH, and almost this whole Town to Ashes wherein 14 Inhabitants perished, but also, two adjacent Villages. And, In grateful Acknowledgement of the DIVINE MERCY, that has raised this Town, like the PHAENIX from it's Ashes, to it's present beautiful and flourishing State, And to prevent by a timely Supply of Water, (with God's Blessing) the fatal Consequences of FIRE hereafter THIS MONUMENT of that dire Disaster and Provision against the like, is humbly erected by JHON BASTARD, a considerable Sharer in the general Calamity. 1760'. An inscription of 1768 records an endowment of £600 by John Bastard and another inscription records the repair of the monument in 1858.

(6) The Almshouses, on the N. side of the churchyard, which were built on land that formerly belonged to the school (Act of Parliament, 5 Geo. III refers), have now disappeared except for the gateway or S. front (Plate 114). This is a triple archway of Greensand ashlar surmounted by a pediment with a central oculus. The round-headed middle arch is larger than the side openings, which have shallow segmental heads. Above each side arch is a recessed limestone plaque; that to the W. is inscribed 'THE ALMSHOUSES AT THE WEST END OF THE CHURCH BEING DESTROYED BY THE FIRE, THE 4TH OF JUNE 1731, THIS WAS BUILT BY THE CORPORATION TO SUPPLY ITS LOSS 1736'. The E. plaque has an inscription of 1846.

(7) Ryves's Almshouses (Plate 112) stand on the E. side of Salisbury Street. They were built in 1682 and, being situated near the outskirts of the town, escaped the fire. They are single-storied with brick walls and have tiled roofs with stone-slate verges. The main range stands parallel with but a little back from the street, and at each end a short gable-ended wing runs out at right angles as far as the roadside. Four round-headed doorways, symmetrically disposed in the W. wall of the main range, give access to what were originally ten dwellings, now five. Casement windows between the doorways have wide stone surrounds and mullions. The eaves are masked by a plaster cove which turns up at the centre of the range to form a small gable supported on wooden consoles. Beneath the gable is a stone tablet, surrounded by a moulded architrave and surmounted by an achievement-of-arms of Ryves. The tablet is inscribed 'GEORGIVS RYVES ARMIGER DE DAMARY VICE COMES DORSETENSIS GERONTOCOMIVM HOC FECIT DICAVIT ANNO DNI MDCLXXXII'.

(8) Coupar House, at the corner of Church Lane and The Plocks, is probably of c. 1750; in 1731 the site was an open garden with a small building at the middle of the W. side (Bastards' plan, Plate 104). The W. range has a normal Group (i) plan and is of three storeys. The E. range is differently orientated from the W. and therefore appears to be of another period; presumably it is earlier since the top floor of the W. range is accessible only from the E. range.

Coupar House is the largest and most splendidly decorated private house of the post-fire period in Blandford Forum, and the only one to have the richness of Portland stone dressings on its brick façade (Plate 105). In the front garden, handsomely carved urn finials surmount the piers which flank the gateways and occur at intervals in the wall. Despite the use of costly materials the façade is curiously amateurish in design. The various elements of the composition, adequate in themselves, are ill co-ordinated and little attention is paid to rules of proportion. The interior is richly fitted and the main staircase is the handsomest in Blandford.

The brickwork of the W. front consists only of headers, red bricks being used in the wings and blue bricks in the central feature. In the two lower storeys the central feature is flanked by Ionic pilasters carrying an entablature with a pulvinated frieze just above the first-floor window heads. The lower orders of the entablature distinguish the central feature alone but the cornice continues across the whole façade, terminating at French quoins at the extremities of the five-bay elevation. Above the cornice the second storey has at each extremity a panelled stone pilaster superimposed on the quoin below, and French quoins on each side of the centre bay superimposed on the Ionic pilasters. The façade is capped by a second cornice, returned as a pediment over the central bay. On the ground floor the central doorway is flanked by three-quarter columns carrying a full Doric entablature and pediment. Above, the middle first-floor window has an eared architrave, scrolled stone cheek pieces and shaped consoles to the window-sill. The lintel and keystone are squeezed with difficulty into the space below the main entablature, the window architrave being thinner than it should be and the keystone cutting into the fascia of the architrave; this is a serious fault of design, and strange in view of the fact that the same problem had been successfully evaded in monuments (1) and (52). The round-headed middle window of the top storey is extended by false panes into the field of the pediment and surrounded by a rusticated architrave with a triple keystone. The lateral windows are simpler than those of the central feature; they have stone architraves with plain keystones, and on the first floor they have sills with shaped consoles.

The stonework of the W. front does not extend in the N. and S. elevations beyond the returns of the corner members. On the S. side, both cornices continue across the end wall of the main range in brickwork and follow the projection of the S. chimney-stack. On the N. wall of the range, the main cornice is not represented and only the upper cornice continues at the foot of the gable. There are no windows in either end wall.

Inside, the square vestibule has a dado of fielded panelling capped with a moulded rail which turns up to follow the stairs and is continued on the first-floor landing. On the ground floor, doorways to N. and S. have eared architraves and sixpanel doors; the entrance doorway is similarly treated but with an eight-panel door. The carved oak stairs (Plate 84) have an open string and a rich version of the Tuscan-column balustrade that is usual in 18th-century Blandford buildings; each tread carries three balusters and the moulded handrail ends at the bottom in a fist-shaped scroll. The square end of each step is panelled and the spandrel below the panel is enriched with a foliate scroll. The S.W. room is panelled to its full height with fielded 18th-century panelling, the middle panel of each wall being accentuated by bolection mouldings; the dentil cornice is of wood. The marble fireplace surround is flanked by foliate scrolled cheek-pieces; above rests a pulvinated laurel and acanthus frieze with an oblong centre panel on which is carved a delicate swag of flowers and fruit; the overmantel has a shouldered centre panel flanked by fluted composite pilasters supporting an entablature with a broken pediment. The N.W. room (Plate 117) is decorated in much the same way, but with a cornice enriched with egg-and-dart mouldings, a tier of fluted modillions alternating with rosettes, and a fillet of leaf-and-dart below the plain corona. The door heads have flat entablatures with pulvinated leaf friezes. On each side of the fireplace is a round-headed recess. The fireplace surround is flanked by pilasters with pendant leaf festoons crowned by scrolls with scale decoration on the front; these are spanned by an architrave with wave ornament, above which a foliate scroll extends on each side of a central panel; the overmantel consists of an eared architrave with guilloche enrichment flanked by foliate scroll cheek-pieces and crowned by a pediment.

On the first floor the stair hall has a moulded plaster ceiling. The S.W. room has wall panelling of much the same style as in the room beneath, but less rich. The 19th-century fireplace has a reeded stone surround with roundels at the corners; over it rises an overmantel composed of large acanthus brackets supporting a broken pediment and flanking a flat panel with foliate cheek-pieces and a scrolled head. The N.W. first-floor chamber has no panelling; its cornice resembles that of the S.W. room on the ground floor.

The passage between the E. and W. ranges is lined with wooden panelling from the N. end to a transverse arch about half way along it. The N.E. room is wholly lined with fielded panelling above and below a moulded dado rail. The adjacent room has a plain dado rail of c. 1820. Towards the S. end of the passage, stairs lead up to the first floor of the W. block, which is also entered from the half-landing of the main staircase. The first-floor N.E. room has a bolection-moulded overmantel and a moulded wooden cornice around part of the ceiling.

The house is separated from the street by a forecourt 30 ft. wide, bounded by high brick walls which terminate at stone piers on either side of an iron-railed centre section. The piers have panelled sides and moulded cappings and support carved stone vases. Other vases decorate brick piers at the N. and S. ends of the court.

(9) Lime Tree House (Plate 109) faces Coupar House across Church Lane and is a small Group (i) residence; it probably was built soon after the fire (for plan, see p. 18). The house is of two storeys with attics; a service wing extends W. and S. at the rear and there is a further S. extension which may formerly have been for stables. The E. front is of blue header bricks with red brick dressings and red brick chaînage between the jambs of the ground and first-floor openings. The windows have gauged red brick flat arches with triple keystones; the tiled roof has two flat-topped dormers with sashed windows. At the eaves is a moulded cornice. The central entrance has an eared architrave and fluted Tuscan pilasters supporting two orders of scrolled foliate brackets; these support a segmental wooden hood (Plate 69).

Inside, the stair balustrade (Plate 84) is of the common Tuscan column pattern, a modest version of the one at Coupar House; the moulded handrail ends in a fist-scroll with acanthus enrichment. The hall and staircase walls have fielded dado panelling capped by a moulded rail. The N. room is lined to the ceiling with fielded panelling in two heights, with a moulded dado and a deep cornice. The fireplace has an eared stone surround enclosed in a carved wooden architrave moulding with leaf enrichment, flanked by wooden cheek-pieces with scrolls and acanthus ornament; above is a pulvinated frieze with laurel and ribbon enrichment and an oblong centre panel with a floral swag; a band of egg-and-tongue moulding supports the mantel-shelf. The overmantel is an oblong panel with bead-and-reel and leaf-and-dart mouldings. The S. room has a panelled dado, and panelled cupboard doors on each side of the fireplace. The two principal bedrooms have panelled window shutters and that to the N. has a panelled overmantel.

(10) Old Bank House, 25 yds. N.W. of the church, has a Group (i) plan with a service wing stretching out to the N. from the W. part of the main range. The lower part of the W. wall survives from before the fire of 1731 and is probably a vestige of the School House (Bastard's town plan, and Survey Book, p. 29); it is built of thin, variegated bricks and terminates to N. and S. in stone quoins. Three windows, one blocked, and a doorway with a chamfered stone surround, a segmental head and a stone hood-mould, open in this wall. The upper courses of the W. wall belong to the post-fire period like the rest of the house.

The S. front (Plate 114) has a basement, two main storeys and a dormered attic and is of five bays, the middle bay slightly wider than the others. The basement corresponds in height with the stone quoin of the School House. The tall ground-floor windows have segmental arches of half bricks, with painted keystones. The first-floor windows have flat brick heads without keystones; a few inches above them is a moulded wooden cornice which returns for a short distance on each end-wall. The front door, of six panels, is sheltered by a porch, perhaps a later addition, consisting of a segmental hood on two free-standing, square wooden columns and corresponding pilasters; the columns rest on stone podia which flank the six steps leading up to the doorway. A large scroll-shaped castiron lamp or sign bracket projects from the W. corner of the S. front. Inside, the stairs from ground to first floor have plain balusters, presumably in replacement of an earlier balustrade, which may be represented by the Tuscan newel-post at the foot. The flight to the second floor retains turned balusters similar to those in Lime Tree House (9). The stairs which go up to the N.W. attics retain some 18th-century lattice-work balustrades.

(11) The Rectory, 50 yds. N.E. of the church, faces S. across the churchyard. It was built after the fire, somewhat N. of the original vicarage site (Act of Parliament, cit.) and has a Group (i) plan with a five-bay, two-storied S. front of blue brick headers, with red brick quoins and dressings; the flat window heads have triple keystones. The original central doorway has been removed and a window substituted, the inserted brickwork being skilfully bonded so that little trace of the former opening remains. Wings were added to N. and W. of the original block in the 19th century. An 18th-century door frame reset in the S. wall of the W. wing may be from the original front entrance. It is flanked by pilasters which are divided into two equal panels by roundels; the lower panels are reeded, those above have pendant leaf swags; the pilasters support scrolled consoles and a segmental hood.

Internally the house has been extensively altered but the stairs seem to be original, albeit reset. They are of the familiar pattern already noted at Lime Tree House (9).

(12) The Old House (Plate 110), on the S. side of The Close and about 200 yds. N.E. of the church, is of brick in a free English bond wherein one header course alternates with two, three or four stretcher courses. The steep hipped roof with wide spreading eaves is of gradated stone-slates for two thirds of its height and of tiles above. Although the kitchen wing appears to have been added after the walls of the main block were complete, the roofs are homogeneous and the addition must have been made while the house was still in building. The proportions of the windows, the rustication of the brickwork and the design of the roof all indicate the middle of the 17th century. In the later part of the 17th century the house belonged to Dr. Joachim Frederic Sagittary, a German, who entered Queen's College, Oxford, at the age of 17 in 1634, received his M.D. in 1661, practised medicine in Blandford and died in 1696. The house is likely to have been built by him some time between 1650 and 1670.

The house is something of an oddity and is described by Hutchins as 'an architectural graft from the "fatherland" planted by the worthy doctor on the soil of his adopted country' (I, 242). Nevertheless it has affinities with the 'artizan' style of the second half of the 17th century, exemplified in the contemporary halls of City Livery Companies, and in a number of houses of the period in the City of London and elsewhere.

The plan is L-shaped with the re-entrant angle to the S.W., and a porch of two storeys projecting from the principal front, to the N. Apart from the W. extension the porch and the rest of the N. front are symmetrical. Bold rustication is formed by recessing every fourth brick course and by setting recessed vertical bricks in the intervening courses. The rustication only occurs on N. walls; on the flanks of the porch and on the E. elevation of the main block it turns the corner and ceases in the form of a quoin. A three-course plat-band above the ground-floor window heads is continuous on all sides of the house; where rustication occurs the plat-band is surmounted by a brick roll-moulding. Above the first-floor windows is a brick cornice, with a cavetto at the bottom, a roll in the middle and a cyma at the top. Over this rests a wooden wall-plate from which project shaped eaves brackets; they are about 1½ ft. long and 4 ins. wide, except those which correspond with the main roof trusses, which are 6 ins. wide. Similar brackets form a cornice to the porch, although the porch roof is flat. The N. front of the porch has a doorway with a semicircular arch of rusticated brick voussoirs and a similar outer arch over the central portion. The central voussoir of the upper arch is truncated to leave room for a sphere, cut in brick, while the spandrels between the outer voussoirs and the plat-band are filled with cryptic emblems in cut brickwork, apparently representing a rose with three leaves (or a flaming catherinewheel) and a heart lying on its side. Over the doorway is a niche with sill, jambs, impost and elliptical head of moulded brick; it is flanked by baluster-shaped square standards. The first-floor window immediately above the niche is of two lights with a moulded wooden surround, mullion and transom. The window-head lies immediately below the cornice, with neither arch nor lintel. The E. and W sides of the porch are of plain brick in the lower storey but they have recessed moulded panels at the level of the ornamental niche, and panels outlined with chamfered bricks at the level of the first-floor window. On each side of the porch, the N. wall of the main range has, at ground-floor level, single three-light transomed windows with details as in the two-light porch window; they are spanned immediately below the plat-band by flat brick arches, recessed at intervals to represent rusticated voussoirs. The first-floor windows are similar except that, like the porch window, their wooden surrounds support the cornice without the intervention of a lintel. Recessed aprons below the first-floor window-sills have panels corresponding with those already noted in the lateral walls of the porch.

The W. part of the N. elevation, fronting the kitchen, is set 9 ins. behind the main plane; it is traversed by a three-course plat-band in continuation of that already noted. Nevertheless this wing has three storeys in place of two and the first-floor window intersects the plat-band; it and the second-floor window are of two lights, with moulded wooden frames and mullions but without brick lintels. A corresponding opening at ground level is blocked up. At eaves level, to compensate for the set-back, eaves brackets have an extra 9 ins. length of shank to allow one roof to cover the whole N. front. A dormer window of three lights, with a hipped roof to match the main roof, is set a little to the E. of the centre-line of the three-light windows on the W. side of the porch.

The E. front is traversed by continuations of the plat-band and cornice noted on the N. front. Near the N. end an unmoulded two-light casement window gives light to the basement. The first and second storeys have each two two-light transomed windows similar to those described, the lower pair with rusticated segmental brick heads. The S. opening in each storey is blocked up internally, but the wood surrounds and the vertical bars to which leaded glazing was formerly attached are still seen externally. On the S. front of the S. wing the plat-band and the cornice continue as before, but the original casements have been replaced on each floor by a pair of 18th-century sashed windows. A blocked window occurs on each floor in the W. wall of the S. wing. A doorway in the S. wall of the W. wing, near the re-entrant angle of the L plan, is perhaps of the 18th century but a sashed window above it appears to be modern. To the W. of these openings a stout buttress projects from the S. wall. It is of brick in four stages, with moulded and tiled weathering to the two upper stages and stone weathering to the two lower stages; it appears to be contemporary with the house. The W. part of the S. wall of the W. extension is built for a height of about 6 ft. above ground in banded brick and flint, and the same material continues in the W. elevation to within 2 ft. of the N.W. corner; above the banded masonry the W. wall is of brick with no noteworthy features. Two large chimneystacks emerge from the roof ridges; one at the intersection of the W. hips has recently been rebuilt but the other, near the middle of the S. range, appears to be original. An oblong brick flue, perhaps originally square as indicated by a vertical joint, is capped, 2 ft. above the ridge, by a bold cornice; above this rises a polygonal stack of eight unequal sides, encircled by a ring of detached terracotta shafts, one shaft at each change of plane. The shafts stand on moulded brick plinths and support rectilinear projections of the oversailing moulded brick cornice, which returns around the whole stack, breaking forward at each angle.

Inside, the house is disappointing since many original features were removed about 1900. A wooden column supporting a beam in the basement is probably of the early 19th century. The massive oak stairs to the basement are probably original; they have close strings, heavy turned balusters, square newels with ball finials and a deep rectangular handrail. The panelling of the hall is modern, and probably the chimney-piece also. The dining room has a moulded dado-rail and panelled window shutters. The wooden fireplace surround has a bolection-moulded architrave surmounted by a rococo frieze of arabesques and garlands, deeply undercut. The drawing room has fielded 18th-century panelling that probably dates from the period when the windows were altered. Two first-floor rooms have fireplaces with bolection-moulded surrounds, possibly original. The hipped roofs, visible in the attics, have massive principals running from wall-plate to ridge, with tie-beams at the base, collar-beams at attic ceiling level, and shaped king-posts rising from the collars.

(13) Dale House (Plate 112 and illustration facing p. 38), No. 79 Salisbury Street, is now the Constitutional Club. The Bastards' town plan indicates that the nucleus of the building survived the 1731 fire, and this is confirmed by the stone entrance doorway dated 1689. The original building was more than doubled in size in the first half of the 19th century by additional wings to N. and W., and it was again enlarged about 30 years later. In 1930 the entrance doorway was transferred from the E. to the S. front.

The five-bay E. front is of brick with stone dressings, and of two storeys, with a central projection comprising one bay. The lateral bays and the corners of the central bay have rusticated stone quoins. The lateral windows have flat lintels of gauged brick with stone keys; immediately over the ground-floor keystones the whole façade is traversed by a stone platband. The E. front is crowned by a heavy coved cornice of plaster and wood, steeply gabled over the centre bay. The central ground-floor opening originally had a stone doorway surmounted by a pulvinated frieze and a segmental pediment inscribed 1689; these now embellish the S. front. In the upper storey, the centre bay has a round-headed window with stone imposts and a keystone.

Internally the house has been entirely rearranged and no notable 17th-century feature survives. The dado and cornice of the S.E. room (the S. room of the original house) are of the 19th century. The S.W. room, c. 1830, has a reed-moulded plaster cornice, and the door surrounds in the entrance hall have reeded architraves with angle paterae of the same period. A wooden fireplace surround in the S.E. first-floor room is of the common late 18th-century pattern, with festoons and rosettes of carton-pierre.

(14) Eagle House stands on the W. side of White Cliff Mill Street, 130 yds. from the junction with Salisbury Street. Since the architectural style suggests a date rather earlier than 1731 it seems possible that this was 'Widdow Evens dwelling house, pretty good, chimneys and part of the walls standing', as noted in Bastard's Survey Book, p. 15; but the value of £78 seems low for such a handsome Group (i) house.

The original structure consists of the usual Group (i) range with a brick E. front of five bays. Service annexes must have existed behind the main block but their extent is not known; they disappeared when the house was more than doubled in size early in the 19th century. The E. front is of vitrified blue headers with dressings of red brick; and the ends of the façade and the sides of the middle bay are accentuated by projecting pilasters outlined in red brick. The eaves have an ornate plaster cornice with modillions and leaf-and-tongue mouldings. Between the central pair of pilasters the horizontal cornice is replaced by an open pediment. The sashed windows have flat gauged red brick lintels with triple keystones. On the ground floor, the S. part of the original façade is interrupted by a late 19th-century bay window and porch. The central first-floor window has a round head with a moulded architrave and a triple keystone. The S. front has, to the E., the gabled end wall of the original block with a projecting chimney-stack and, to the W., the wall of the block which was added in the first half of the 19th century and which contains the stairs, lit by a tall round-headed window. Internally the house has been much altered, first by its 19th-century remodelling and later when it was turned into offices. The former entrance hall, where the original stairs were presumably located, has been thrown into the S.E. room, which has fielded 18th-century panelling. A moulded wooden cornice follows the E., S. and W. walls but is absent from the N. wall, in the former entrance hall. The 19th-century stairs are of stone with a plain iron balustrade. Part of the original staircase connects the first floor of the E. block with the somewhat higher first floor of the later W. wing; the wooden balusters have the usual form of Tuscan columns above vase-shaped lower sections.

The foregoing comprise the public buildings and larger private houses in the town. The descriptions of the smaller houses follow, street by street.

Bryanston Street

(15) Park House stands at the W. end of Bryanston Street, which was formerly a through road. It is of two storeys with walls that are mainly rendered; the roof is tiled, with stoneslate verges. The house represents several periods and makes no pretence at symmetry. Bastard's town plan shows it as escaping the fire of 1731, but the present outline differs greatly from that on the plan. The oldest part of the existing house is the N. wing; additions have been made to E. and S., and there is also an addition to the W. of the S. wing. The latter seems to date from the beginning of the 19th century; the E. and S. rooms are perhaps of the mid 18th century but with windows altered in the last phase; the N. wing, presumably the building shown on the Bastard plan, is of the late 17th or early 18th century but with features, such as panelling, of a later period.

(16) Bryanston Cottage, of brick in two storeys, stands on the S. side of the street with its back to the road and the S. front looking over a garden. The E. part of the S. front is symmetrical and of three bays, with a central doorway and flanking bow windows; the latter are of the mid 19th century. The central and western bays were probably built c. 1750 and the eastern bay seems to have been added c. 1820. The part of the 18th-century elevation that can be seen beside the bow window is of blue headers; in it is a flat-headed 18th-century doorway with a moulded wooden architrave. Internally, apart from the added bow windows and the E. room of c. 1820, the original plan is preserved. The front door opens into a square vestibule at the back of which an elliptical-headed opening leads to the staircase. To the right, a doorway with a reeded architrave opens into the E. room, passing through a thick wall which was originally external. To the left, in the staircase hall, the door to the W. room has a moulded architrave with leaf-and-tongue enrichment. The stairs have close strings, Tuscan-column newel posts and slender balusters of the usual type.

(17) House, 20 yds. E. of the foregoing, is a small two-storied building of the late 18th century with a three-bay S. front faced with mathematical tiles imitating brickwork in English bond. To the E. extends an added wing, probably of the mid 19th century but perhaps incorporating earlier service rooms. Inside, the 18th-century range contains a narrow entrance hall with a staircase and, to the W., a ground-floor room decorated with a moulded plaster cornice, with leaf-and-tongue, egg-and-dart and dentil ornament. The open-string stairs have Tuscan newel posts and three balusters to each tread, the balusters being of the column and vase pattern, but unusual in that the columns have pronounced entasis. The step spandrels are ornamented with simple scrolls.

The Close and Sheepmarket Hill

(18) House, facing N. across The Tabernacle, is planned on a difficult site with acute corners; by its style it dates from the late 18th or early 19th century. The N. front is of vitrified headers with red brick dressings and gauged red brick lintels; it is symmetrical and of three bays. The round-headed central doorway, with reeded pilasters, panelled reveals, traceried fan-light and flat hood, is flanked by square sashed windows. Three corresponding windows open in the upper storey and there are two dormer windows in the roof, which is tiled. A moulded wooden eaves cornice with modillions stops at each end against shaped brick kneelers. Inside, the plan is of Group (i), with a room on each side of the central stair hall and a third ground-floor room in a projecting wing at the back; the latter is reached through an archway beneath the upper flight of the dog-legged open-string staircase. The stairs have scroll-outlined step spandrels, Tuscan newels, two turned balusters to each step and a panelled dado. The two front ground-floor rooms have moulded dado-rails with acanthus ornament, enriched plaster cornices and reeded door cases with angle paterae. The larger room, to the W. of the entrance, has a chimneypiece with carton-pierre garlands. The upstairs rooms retain contemporary fireplace surrounds and decorations of more modest description.

The Rectory, see Monument (11).

The Old House, see Monument (12).

(19) Close House, on the S. side of the Close, is separated from the road by a small garden. The symmetrical five-bay two-storied N. front, with its tall windows, thin glazing bars and concealed sash-weight boxes, belongs to the end of the 18th or the beginning of the 19th century. The plan improves on the Group (i) prototype by having two back rooms as well as two front rooms on each floor, with the result that the roof has two ridges and a valley. The N. front is of red brick headers, except in the gauged brick flat window-heads, each with a white keystone. The eaves have a rich cornice with egg-and-dart mouldings, modillions and dentils; the tiled roof has three hipped dormer windows. The valley between the two roofs is concealed by a large chimney-stack at the middle of each endwall. The front door, of six fielded panels, is surrounded by a moulded architrave, above which is a frieze of carton-pierre garlands. Slender pilasters on each side are capped by brackets with vertical and horizontal scroll consoles, supporting an open pedimental hood. Inside, a narrow passage with a panelled dado passes between the two front rooms to the staircase hall at the rear, emerging into the hall through a semicircular archway with acanthus and leaf-and-tongue beading. The stairs have outline scroll decoration on the spandrels, two slender turned balusters to each tread and a mahogany handrail. The N.E. ground-floor room has a dado of fielded panelling with a fluted dado-rail with rosettes at intervals. The fireplace surround is very richly decorated with garlands and urns and has a highly enriched cornice in which dentils alternate with pinecones. The plaster ceiling cornice is ornamented with swags. The N.W. room has a similar cornice, a plain dado-rail and a mid 19th-century fireplace. The S.E. room has a dado of fielded panelling and a wooden fireplace surround with a dentil frieze and a moulded cornice.

(20) Cottages, 6 and 7 Sheepmarket Hill, facing the churchyard, are a symmetrical pair of brick-fronted early 19th-century two-storied tenements, each having one room and a scullery on the ground floor, and no vestibule or service-passage. The winding staircases are beside the chimney-breasts, which are set in the side walls. A blind first-floor window recess corresponds with the coupled front doorways.

East Street

The eastern part of the street was destroyed in the fire of 1713 (Hutchins I, 216) and was spared by the fire of 1731 probably because the rebuilt houses had tiled instead of thatched roofs. Hence the houses E. of Nos. 34 and 41 (Bastard's town plan clearly marks the extent of the second fire) are potentially as early as 1713; nevertheless it is clear that many of them were rebuilt later.

North side:—

(21) Houses, Nos. 6 and 8, near the E. end of the street, are small, late 18th-century Group (iv) dwellings, of two storeys with dormer-windowed attics under tiled roofs (Plate 115). The common service-passage leads to accommodation that was originally a third dwelling. The S. front is of red and blue bricks, partly in Flemish, partly in English and partly in header bond. Internally, the stairs of No. 6 have an open string with scroll spandrels, turned balusters and square newel-posts. No. 8 has a winding stair, and a small area of fielded panelling in the back room.

(22) Houses, Nos. 14 and 16, of two storeys with a rendered S. front, are probably of the early 18th century but have been modernised internally.

(23) Houses, Nos. 18 and 20, of two storeys with a rendered S. front, have Group (iv) plans and are probably of early 18th-century origin but altered in the 19th century when an additional range of dwellings was built at the rear of No. 18. The entrance to the common service-passage has a gabled hood on scrolled brackets.

(24) Houses, Nos. 22 and 24, of two storeys, have a nearly symmetrical three-bay S. front, faced with mathematical tiles. The entrance to the common service-passage has a pedimental hood on foliate brackets. The fireplace in a ground-floor room of No. 22 has a panelled overmantel flanked by scroll-shaped cheek-pieces.

(25) House, No. 26, a two-storied dwelling with attics and cellar, is a humble version of the Group (i) plan, not isolated, and having a brick S. front of only three bays. A two-storied N. wing behind the E. part of the S. range has flush-framed sashed windows with heavy glazing bars and is probably earlier than the front range. The stairs have been renewed at ground-floor level but the upper flight has original turned balusters and moulded newels. A small passage room in the N. wing, opening off the staircase landing and lit by one of the early sashed windows, has a coved plaster ceiling with ornate rococo decoration of serpentine acanthus foliage.

(26) Lyston House, No. 32 East Street, is a five-bay two-storied Group (i) house. Bastard's town plan shows that the site was spared by the fire of 1731 but the building has the character of the post-fire period and is likely to have been rebuilt, probably before 1750. The Flemish-bond brick façade has pilasters at each end and a slightly projecting centre bay containing the doorway. A plat-band traverses the lateral parts of the façade at first-floor level, stopping against the central feature but carried across the terminal pilasters; the façade is crowned by a cornice with fluted modillions and leaf-andtongue ornament. Over this rises the tiled roof, with two hipped dormer windows. The nine sashed windows of the S. front are uniform, each with a flat lintel of gauged bricks in which the three middle bricks project to form a key, in this case not rendered. The pedimented door hood seems to be of the 19th century, perhaps replacing one more elaborate. Internally, the hall contains a wooden open-string staircase with the usual Tuscan newel post and two balusters to each tread; the staircase wall has a dado with fielded panels and the step spandrels have outline scrolls. The front room (Plate 116) on the W. of the hall has fielded panelling from floor to ceiling, with a moulded dado-rail. Cross-beams with guilloche ornament divide the ceiling into four compartments, each with rococo enrichment. The fireplace, to the W., has an eared marble surround outlined in egg-and-dart moulding and flanked by scrolled cheek-pieces; the frieze has pendant acanthus buds flanking a flower festoon over which rises a pediment. The overmantel has a panel of Greek-key ornament culminating in a cherub head with scrolls; on each side are pendant festoons of flowers and ribbons hanging from shells.

(27) House, No. 34, now a shop, adjoins (26) and continues the plinth and cornice. The lower storey has been replaced by modern shop fittings but the S. front on the first floor retains three segmental-headed sashed windows. The E. bay is in the same plane as (26) but the two W. bays are set forward.

(28) Cottages, Nos. 36 and 38, are of Group (iv), in two storeys with brick fronts; they are of the late 18th century.

(29) House and Shop, No. 40, two-storied with a rough-cast front, is of the late 18th or early 19th century. The glazingbars of the shop-window and door have the form of minute columns supporting elliptical arches.

South side:—

(30) Houses, Nos. 1 and 3, are an asymmetrical pair, of two storeys, with rendered walls and tiled roofs; they were built probably soon after 1713. No. 1 marks the beginning of the S. side of East Street and has its main façade facing E.; a side entrance to No. 1 and the front-door of No. 3 open side by side in the N. front. The E. front has a hipped roof with a dormer window while, to the left, a subsidiary wing extends southwards, first in two storeys and then in one. The main part of the elevation has a moulded and coved eaves cornice. The front doorway, in the S. part of the main E. front, has a moulded architrave and fluted side pilasters terminating in scrolled consoles, upon which rests a segmental hood; the tympanum is ornamented with flower wreaths. A large sashed window with exposed weight-boxes opens to the N. of the doorway and a similar window occurs to the S. in the slightly recessed subsidiary wing. Smaller openings on the first floor approximately correspond with those below. Unlike the E. front, the N. front has a plat-band; the cornice is continuous. On the ground floor, the N. front has a big sashed window to the E., then two uniform doorways followed by two more windows; the doorways have moulded architraves, panelled reveals and soffits, and flat hoods on scroll brackets. On the first floor are four uniform sashed windows, irregularly spaced, two to each house.

(31) Eastway House, No. 5, is in the part of the street which was spared by the 1731 fire, but Bastard's town plan shows a building close to the street whereas the present house is set appreciably back from the building line; hence the house is probably of the postfire period. The main door-case and the shaped parapet and urns of the N. front are perhaps mid 18th-century additions to a façade of c. 1735. The plan is two rooms deep and is covered with a double roof, but the rear drawing-room may be another addition of c. 1750; without it the plan would be typical of Group (i): a straight front range with a kitchen wing at the rear. The N. front (Plate 113) shows interesting rococo tendencies and the rococo plasterwork of the interior is noteworthy.

The symmetrical N. front is of five closely spaced bays and has a central doorway flanked by pairs of flat-headed sashed windows, with five similar windows on the first floor and a round-headed attic window centrally above. The ground and first-floor windows have gauged brick flat arches punctuated by projecting keystones; the central first-floor window is accentuated by a curvilinear soffit. Plat-bands are set at first and attic floor levels; a brick parapet rises above the upper platband and, over the three middle bays, develops into a pediment with ramped abutments and three ornamental urns. The attic window which opens in the pediment has plain impost blocks and a keystone. The central doorway, on the ground floor, has a round head with a fanlight and a lion-mask keystone; it is flanked by wooden Ionic pilasters supporting a moulded entablature and pediment. Since the first-floor plat-band has been rather carelessly hacked away to make room for the apex of this pediment it seems that the door-case may be secondary; it is, moreover, rather cramped between the flanking windows. The S. front is rendered and asymmetrical. On the ground floor the drawing-room has a three-light Venetian window; the first floor has a similar window set between two flat-headed openings, and the attic storey has a single dormer window.

Inside, the front door opens into a passage containing the stairs, with a room on each side, but the cornice suggests that the E. room originally was not divided from the passage. The open-string stairs have fluted Tuscan newel posts and the usual balusters of small columns above vases. The step spandrels are enriched with outline scrolls. The ceiling of the W. room is decorated with a central mask surrounded by radiant beams and a foliate wreath, perhaps 19th-century work. The drawing-room, at the rear of the house, has elaborate rococo decorations of c. 1750. The fireplace, on the E. wall (Plate 117), has a shaped marble surround outlined with egg-and-dart and leaf mouldings, and surmounted by a roundel of amorini in a wreath of flowers and fruit; above is a scrolled and shaped mantelshelf and a highly enriched plaster overmantel, with C-scrolls and flower festoons enclosing an oval panel. On each side of the fireplace is a niche with a round head decorated with a mask in an aureole of acanthus leaves. The W. wall of the room has two doorways, one of them false, flanking a niche with a marble shelf on which rests a gadrooned marble vase; over the vase the niche is embellished with waterfowl and plants in relief; over the niche-head are delicate grape festoons. The coved cornice is enriched with rococo ornament and the ceiling is bordered with flower wreaths and arabesques; at the centre three flying doves bear a wreath of flowers.

(32) Houses, Nos. 7 to 17, are a row of paired Group (iv) houses. Although built individually they all date from the first quarter of the 18th century; all are of two storeys with dormerwindowed attics. Nos. 15 and 17 are higher and have larger windows than the others, and an attempt is made to equalise the two tenements of each pair by setting the service-passage walls a little to the left of the centre-line (see plan on p. 19). The original entrances from the service-passages have been replaced by 19th-century street doorways, and the ground-floor windows have been modernised.

(33) Houses and Shops, Nos. 21 to 39, are small early 18th-century houses of two storeys with tiled roofs, mostly with dormer windows; all are of brick but some have rendered fronts. Most of the houses were originally of Group (iv) although they have now been modified. All the shop-fronts are of the 19th century or later but the first-floor elevations have 18th-century sashed windows and some have coved eaves cornices.

(34) Stour House, No. 41, occupies the site of the most easterly building in the street to be destroyed in the 1731 fire (Bastard's town plan). The N. range has a Group (i) plan, albeit of four bays. On the E. it is separated from the next house by a narrow driveway; on the W. it is flanked by Common Lane, which goes down to the river. The two-storied N. front, of Flemish-bonded brickwork, has a plaster modillion cornice with egg-and-dart and leaf-and-tongue mouldings. On the ground floor the front doorway is placed to the W. of the centre line, with two sashed windows to the E. and one to the W.; the first floor has four openings. All windows have gauged brick lintels punctuated by keystones. The doorway has an eared architrave flanked by plain uprights which develop at the top into double console brackets with scale and foliate enrichment; these support a flat, lead-covered hood, panelled on the underside. The original range, only one room thick, is joined at the W. end to a S. wing of c. 1800 containing the stairs; these are lit by a tall round-headed W. window. The S. wing presumably takes the place of an earlier service wing.

The front door opens into a passage between the dining-room on the left and the study on the right. At the S. end of the passage an archway with moulded architrave and keystone leads into the early 19th-century stair hall, in which an 18th-century staircase has been reset; it has the usual Tuscan newel posts and three balusters to each step. The spandrels have carved scrolls with leaf enrichment and the moulded handrail ends at the bottom in a horizontal volute. The dining-room has a panelled dado and a rich plaster cornice; the fireplace has an eared marble surround framed in wooden leaf-and-tongue moulding and flanked by deeply fretted acanthus cheek-pieces; the mantelshelf rests on paired acanthus consoles between which is a frieze of acorn, oak and acanthus sprays, in high relief, flanking a central vase. The drawing-room, in the S. wing, has a fireplace surround recently transferred from the first floor; it is of carved wood with flowered and scrolled cheek-pieces, deeply carved foliate arabesques on the frieze and a moulded cornice of cable and stylised foliage. The late 18th-century fire-place surround in the study has recently been brought from elsewhere.

(35) House, No. 45, appears to be a mid 18th-century structure although extensively rebuilt. Apart from the gauged brick lintels with triple keystones, the three-storied N. front is entirely of header bricks. The S. elevation contains two large segmental-headed Venetian windows on the ground floor, and a wrought-iron balcony on stone brackets on the first floor.

(36) House, Nos. 47, 49, was built soon after 1731 and is two-storied, with a five-bay N. front of blue headers with red brick dressings to the window openings. The first-floor windows have label-shaped aprons. The gauged brick lintels have triple keystones and the eaves have a coved plaster cornice that returns on itself at each end inside the width of the façade. On the ground floor the three W. bays are obliterated by a mid 19th-century shop-front. It is likely that the original entrance to the house was in the central bay and that there were two windows on each side; the two eastern openings still exist but one of them has now become a doorway.

(37) Houses, pair, No. 51, are exceptionally small and low Group (iv) houses, probably built soon after 1731. The N. front is rendered and the shop-fronts are modern. The first-floor windows have 19th-century sashes in original sash-boxes.

(38) The Star Inn, although remodelled at the end of the 19th century, contains elements of an 18th-century building.

The elevations of Monuments (39) to (44) appear in the illustration facing p. 32. Unless otherwise stated, the façades are of blue brick with red brick dressings.

(39) House, No. 55, is of the mid 18th century and in its original form was probably of Group (ii); the plan has now been obliterated by a modern shop. The E. wall, flanking the entry to an adjacent yard, is of banded rubble and flint and may be a survival from before the fire of 1731.

(40) Houses, Nos. 57 and 59, are a pair of mid 18th-century Group (iv) houses. The first-floor bay window of No. 57 is a later addition and the shop fronts are modern.

(41) House, No. 61, now two shops, was originally a threestoried residence representing Group (iii) in a large form; it was probably built soon after 1731. Although the ground-floor shops are modern, the carriage-way to the E. is original. The main entrance of the house, in the W. wall of the carriage-way, opens into a transverse corridor behind the front room. The stairs are at the W. end of the corridor; they have open strings and foliate scrolls on the step spandrels; the newels and balusters are of the usual Tuscan pattern. On the first floor the two front rooms have moulded cornices, and one contains a late 18th-century carton-pierre fireplace surround.

(42) Houses, Nos. 63 and 65, are a pair of mid 18th-century Group (iv) houses.

(43) Houses, Nos. 67 and 69, are a pair of 18th-century Group (iv) houses with the unusual feature of a central chimney-stack bridging the common service-passage. The doorways on each side of the passage now give access to stairs leading directly to first-floor flats but this is probably the result of 19th-century remodelling. The street front has modern shops on the ground floor, sashed windows on the first floor and gabled attic dormers in a mansard roof.

(44) House, Nos. 71, 73, is now four-storied but it was originally of two storeys. The ground floor has been completely obliterated by a modern shop; the first floor is lit by two sashed windows and a large wooden bay window. The latter must be original, otherwise the red brick jamb of a former sashed window would be seen beside it. The moulded plat-band above the first-floor windows is probably part of an original eaves cornice and the two upper storeys are 19th-century reproductions of the first floor. Internally, the remains of an 18th-century staircase on the top storey have presumably been moved up from their original position.

For No. 75 East Street, see Monument (45).

The Market Place

South side:—

The following description of the Market Place (Plate 97) begins with No. 26, which is the W. half of No. 75 East Street. The elevations of Monuments (45) to (52) appear in the illustration facing p. 32. As before, façades are of blue brick with red brick dressings unless described otherwise.

(45) Houses, Nos. 26 The Market Place and 75 East Street (Plate 108), were originally three houses. No. 75 was John Bastard's own house, which he rebuilt for £704 10S. after the fire. No. 26 was two houses, built by Bastard for £420 and leased to Mr. Price, apothecary, and Mr. Morgan, brazier; the ground belonged to Williams's Charity. These facts are confirmed in the Survey Book: '. . . the house they lived in, which was the house belonging to Mr. Williamses charoty on the south side the street opposet the church'; and later in the same book: 'Memorandum. Before the fier we had but one of the houses on Williamses charoty land . . . that on the east side of the gate, where we lived. . . . To incurage us to build the other two houses they gave us a lease for 90 years. . . .'

The three houses almost certainly date from the 1730s. They resemble the nearby Red Lion Inn (47) in having a central carriage-way leading through to a back yard and, in the upper storeys of the N. front, two ornamental pilasters rising above the carriage-way to support an open pediment. Today there are shop fronts on each side of the archway. The W. shop is of the late 19th century; that to the E. is modern. Photographs taken before 1937 show the E. part of the N. front with a rendered ground storey with two sashed windows on the left and, next to the carriage-way, an 18th-century doorway, with pediment, pilasters and panelled reveals. In the upper part of the façade red bricks in Flemish bond are used for the lateral wings while the central feature, between the pilasters, is of blue headers. The ends of the façade have rusticated quoins of painted plaster. The Corinthian caps of the two pilasters have a single tier of acanthus leaves and up-growing corner volutes, in-turned and joined together by delicately moulded, individually designed swags of fruit and flowers. The rear of the building has no formal design; most of the window openings have segmental brick heads and the walls are capped by brick dentil cornices. The carriage-way, about 21 ft. long, leads to an irregular yard flanked by the rear wings of the building.

Inside, the disposition of the staircases confirms that the building was originally three separate houses, all of Group (iii), the E. house large and richly appointed, the others more modest. The central room on the first floor belonged to one of the W. houses while that of the second floor may have been part of the E. house. In John Bastard's house, the doorway and ground-floor windows of the N. front, which perished in 1937, opened into a vestibule and a large room, of which only the plaster ceilings remain. The ceiling of the room is divided into six compartments by one longitudinal and two transverse beams, all decorated with flower scrolls on the sides and soffits and with rosettes at the intersections. Behind this room the house is traversed from side to side by a corridor, 7 ft. wide, originally entered through a doorway from the carriage-way, now blocked. A transverse arch divides the corridor into two equal parts; the inner part contains the stairs, with balusters of the usual Tuscan column pattern, a fist-shaped lower terminal to the handrail, carved and scrolled step spandrels and a panelled dado. A doorway on the landing at the top of the first flight of stairs leads to a richly decorated mezzanine apartment (Plate 116) in the rear wing, lit by two sashed windows on the W. Above a plain dado the walls have 18th-century wooden panelling with raised fields surrounded by leaf-and-dart mouldings. Above is a plaster frieze composed of heavy swags of oak leaves and acorns, alternating with human masks on pendant drapery; the cornice is similar to that of the N. front. The modelled ceiling has an octagonal centre panel surrounded by oblong panels with acanthus rinceaux (Plate 107); each corner has a chaplet of foliage enclosing a bust in low relief; intervening spaces are embellished with rococo arabesques and amorini. The fireplace, at the N. end of the room, has a moulded and mitred architrave and a rich overmantel composed of panelled pilasters capped with scrolled brackets and flanked with pendant drapery and tassels; above is an open pediment. The door from the staircase, on the E. side of the fireplace, has fielded panels outlined with leaf-and-tongue mouldings; the two top panels are decorated with roundels. The enriched architrave is surmounted by an entablature, above which is an oblong recess. The matching doorway on the other side of the fireplace opens into a small cupboard. Facing the fireplace at the S. end of the room is another and more splendidly decorated doorway; it leads to nothing but a blank wall and appears always to have done so.

In No. 26 the ground floor is now a single office, but the plan of the upper storeys shows that it was originally two tenements, divided by a N.–S. party wall; the E. tenement seems to have been entered from the S. side, the W. from the N. Each tenement has its own staircase, with newel posts and balustrades of the common Tuscan column form. In the E. tenement, the N. first-floor room has a dado-rail on which the fascia is enriched with interlacing ornament. The door has an eared architrave with paterae in the ears, and the fireplace surround has a frieze of rinceaux. The rear room has a zone of fielded panelling below the dado-rail, a simple fireplace and a moulded plaster cornice. The W. tenement has a fireplace with reeded pilasters and frieze.

(46) House, Nos. 24 and 22, now two tenements but originally one, is of the late 18th century. A service-passage to the E. leads to a back yard, flanked by 19th-century outbuildings.

(47) The Red Lion Inn, Nos. 20 and 18 (Plate 108), now converted into dwellings and a warehouse, appears on stylistic grounds to date from soon after the fire. It resembles (45) in having a symmetrical N. front of three storeys and five bays, with a carriage-way flanked by shops on the ground floor, and a pedimented centre bay flanked by Corinthian pilasters in the first and second storeys.

Although the arrangement of the main features is similar to that of (45) the architectural composition is more advanced. The various elements are effectively disposed and the freedom of the baroque style is exploited with restraint and ability.

Above the carriage-way the principal feature of the N. front is a pair of pilasters rising through two storeys to support an open pediment in which is displayed the inn sign, a heraldic lion in relief with a scroll in its forepaws, backed by an ornate plaster cartouche. The pilasters have Corinthian capitals with reversed volutes and pendant acanthus foliage. The open pediment and cornice are elaborately modelled, with rosettes between foliate modillions and a leaf-and-tongue moulding below the corona. The S. elevation is of English-bond brickwork and has segmental-headed sash windows, except in the W. part where a wooden bay window has been added on the first and second storeys; the wall is capped by a brick dentil cornice. Inside, the building has been greatly altered. The inn was converted into three houses before 1802 (Salisbury Journal, Feb. 15th) and the only remains of original decoration are a moulded plaster cornice in the N.E. first-floor room and a Tuscan-column stair balustrade in the W. part of the building.

The present Red Lion Inn stands at the rear of No. 20; it has a dentil cornice as on the back elevation of the main building, and gauged brick window lintels as on the N. front. The front wall, facing E., originally had in its S. part a central doorway with two windows on each side; but the doorway was widened, the two southern windows were rebuilt and one of the northern windows was obliterated in the 19th century, leaving only one original window intact. Of the five symmetrically disposed first-floor windows one is now blocked. A first-floor room contains a fireplace of about 1750.

(48) House, No. 16, has a late 18th-century N. front of two bays, with segmental-headed sashed windows. A pair of Greek Doric columns incorporated in the modern shop-front may be of the early 19th century. The interior was remodelled in the late 19th century but the staircase from the first to the second floor is probably of the 18th century.

(49) House and Shop, No. 14, has a mid 19th-century shop front but the two upper storeys are probably of the early postfire period. A brick plat-band marks the second floor and the façade is capped by a moulded cornice of red brick. The eight uniform sashed windows have segmental heads with triple key-stones; in each storey the E. window is set a little apart from the other three. The interior was completely remodelled in the 19th century.

(50) Houses, three adjoining, comprise a pair of houses, now No. 12 fronting the Market Place, and a third house, No. 10, in an alley to the S. Each tenement of No. 12 has a plan that may originally have been a simple version of Group (ii). The ground-floor shop-front is modern; above, a deep plat-band supports three Tuscan pilasters, the middle one marking the party wall between the two tenements and the outer ones standing close to the extremities of the dual façade. Framed by the pilasters each tenement has, on the first and second floors, two uniform sashed windows with heavy glazing bars and exposed weight boxes. A moulded string-course passes across each tenement at second-floor level, stopping before it reaches the pilasters. To the W. of the façade a first-floor extension of the W. tenement is built out above a carriage-way; it is lit by a wooden bow window of the early 19th century; above it is a dormer-windowed attic. Although the two houses have now been thrown into one, two staircases still exist in the upper storeys; they have rectangular newel posts and Tuscan-column balusters. The first-floor room in the E. house is lined from floor to ceiling with fielded panelling. The two houses share a central chimney-stack.

No. 10 stands in an alley at the back of No. 12 and is probably of the late 18th century. It appears originally to have been a Group (i) house with a central doorway flanked on each side by two sashed windows, with five sashed windows above. The doorway still exists, with a segmental hood on carved scroll consoles, and the five first-floor openings survive although only one retains the original sashes. On the ground floor, the windows N. of the doorway have been blocked up and replaced by an early 19th-century Venetian window; to the S. is a modern bay window. The interior has nothing noteworthy.

(51) House, No. 4, has a N. front of dark red brick with lighter red brick quoins; the centre bay is set a little forward of the others. The ground-floor shop is modern but the upper storeys of the façade are probably of the 18th century. The interior has been entirely altered.

(52) The Old Greyhound Inn (Plate III), now a bank, stands on the S. side of the Market Place at the beginning of West Street. It was built soon after the fire of 1731 and is of three storeys; the N. front is stuccoed, with lavish details of the Corinthian order. Internally the ground floor has been altered beyond recovery but the first and second floors retain much that is original.

As with monuments (45) and (47) the façade of the former Greyhound Inn is a noteworthy example of provincial urban street architecture in the English Baroque style. It is the only post-fire façade in Blandford to be wholly rendered in stucco. The Bastard brothers owned the inn at the time of the fire and had recently refronted it (Bastard's Survey Book, D.C.R.O.); presumably they were responsible for the rebuilding.

Although the N. front is in other respects symmetrical, the main doorway is set to the right of the centre-line with two windows to the W. and four windows, slightly lower, to the E.; only the three easternmost ground-floor openings correspond with the regularly spaced fenestration above. The doorway is sheltered by a porch carried on two free-standing Doric columns, with pilaster responds on each side of the opening. Licence to build the porch was granted in 1812 (Corporation Memorandum Book) and it is likely that the two ground-floor windows to the W. were modified at the same time, for they are asymmetrical, and without the porch the façade would be seriously out of balance. At the level of the porch entablature the façade is traversed by a coved fascia with leaded weathering which acts as a base for the symmetrical composition above; early prints show similar projections on many house fronts in the Market Place. The two upper storeys are each of seven bays, the three central bays, with plain Corinthian pilasters and a pediment, forming a tetrastyle centrepiece. The architrave and the frieze are interrupted between the columns to allow height for the second-floor windows but the modillion cornice is continuous. The pediment has a recessed panel, now empty but formerly containing the sign of the Greyhound. The six windows under the pediment have narrower and richer mouldings than those of the lateral bays; the middle first-floor window differs from the others in having a segmental head, and the window above it is enriched with scrolled cheek pieces and with a mask on the apron below the sill.

The S. elevation is rendered up to first-floor level and of English-bond brickwork above. The W. part projects about 3 ft. to the S. and contains two sashed windows on each floor, those of the ground floor being round-headed. The other windows have segmental heads.

Inside, the room to the right of the main entrance has a moulded cornice, following the walls and returning along a longitudinal centre beam. The window reveals have early 19th-century reeded architraves and the fireplace has a moulded wooden surround; segmental-headed recesses on each side of the chimney-breast probably represent former windows. The open-string stairs have wooden balustrades with Tuscan newel posts, balusters of the usual Tuscan pattern, and a moulded handrail ending in a volute. The end of each step is decorated with a simple scroll in outline. On the first floor, overlooking the Market Place, are two large rooms each with three windows, and a small E. chamber with one window. The W. room (27 ft. by 16 ft.) has a dado with fielded panelling, and a fireplace with a moulded architrave and a panelled overmantel with flat cheek-pieces. The ceiling is divided by transverse beams into four compartments each sub-divided by plaster mouldings into three panels, the central one shaped, the others oblong. The adjoining room (22 ft. by 14 ft.) has a simpler panelled dado, and a wooden fireplace surround, with mantelshelf and pedimented overmantel less elaborate than those of the W. room. The small E. chamber has a reeded fireplace surround with corner roundels. The second-floor rooms have early 19th-century basket grates.

The building at the rear, which is now called the Greyhound Inn, was presumably an annex of the original inn; perhaps the kitchens or tap-room. It appears to be mentioned in Bastard's Survey Book; 'at the Greyhound Inn, all the long back building thats cellared and arch'd under and the front, 1734, cost £787'. The W. front has six bays and is of two storeys with a basement, and with an attic in a mansard roof. The main floor is raised six steps above ground level, allowing for a half-underground cellar that is entered through low doorways. On the main floor are two wide doorways, symmetrically set in the façade so that a segmental-headed window opens on either side of each doorway. The first floor has six uniform sashed windows, corresponding with the openings below. At the eaves is a wooden dentil cornice over a plain fascia board.

West side:—

The elevations of Monuments (53) to (55) appear in the illustration facing p. 38.

(53) House, No. 1 The Market Place, has a modern shop in the ground floor but, above, it retains the two upper storeys of a small but distinguished mid 18th-century Group (ii) town house. The N. and S. corners of the façade have French quoins of painted plaster; between these each storey has three sashed windows, the central windows being set in a slightly projecting bay which is further accentuated by finely coursed red brickwork in contrast to the blue headers of the lateral bays. The façade is crowned by a modillion cornice which breaks forward at the central bay and is capped by a pediment. Internally, the ground-floor plan has perished as completely as the lower third of the façade; the stairs have been transferred to a wing at the rear. There appears originally to have been a service-passage to the W. The front room on the first floor is panelled to the ceiling with fielded panelling, evidently not in situ but possibly brought up from the ground floor. The fireplace has a moulded architrave and a panelled overmantel with a volute pediment. The stairs to the second floor have an open string and Tuscancolumn balusters.

(54) Houses, Nos. 3 and 5, seem originally to have been two uniform Group (ii) houses, each of three storeys and three bays. Although the brick coursing does not run through, the sills and lintels of each storey are at the same level in the two houses, all windows have similar triple keystones and each house has a similar but discontinuous cornice, with dentils and modillions. Internally No. 3 has been completely gutted; in No. 5 the stairs from the ground to the first floor have been moved but the upper flights remain in situ and have details resembling those of (53). Two rooms retain 18th-century fire-place surrounds.

(55) House, No. 7, at the beginning of Salisbury Street, is of two storeys. The ground floor is modern but the first floor has a header-bonded brick façade with three sashed windows, and a fourth, smaller window to the N., above a carriageway. In the course of recent repairs a tile scratched with the date 1734 was discovered; this is likely to be the year when the house was built.

North side:—

The elevations of Monuments (56) to (58) appear in the illustrations facing pp. 32 and 38.

(56) Shop, No. 9, at the corner of Salisbury Street, is of two storeys with cellars and attics and was built probably in the late 18th century. The shop-front seems to be original and consists of six sturdy plaster-faced piers, rectangular in plan, standing on a low brick plinth and supporting, at first-floor level, a wide coved pentice which continues on the W. front, in Salisbury Street. The round-headed shop-window openings are traversed by horizontal architraves enriched with reeding and paterae, above which are beaded fanlights. The upper storey has two sashed windows with segmental rubbed brick arches; the wall is capped by a simple dentil cornice. The W. front is similar; it has one window on the first floor, and three shop windows below; to the N. are two lower bays, continuous with the adjoining house (62).

(57) Shops, Nos. 13 and 15, each have two flat-headed sashed windows on the first and second storeys, and a heavily moulded common cornice with egg-and-dart and acanthus ornament. The building probably dates from the end of the 18th century.

No. 19, The Town Hall, see Monument (4).

(58) House, No. 21, is of five bays. The sashed windows on the first and second floors have flat gauged brick heads with triple keystones; above is an elaborate cornice with modillions, egg-and-dart and leaf-and-tongue mouldings. Although extensively remodelled, the skeleton of the house seems to be an early one and a stone embedded in the E. wall of the ground floor bears the inscription 'This is a parti wall, 1732'.

The Plocks

(59) House, No. 2, now the Municipal Offices and much altered internally, was originally a Group (i) house of three bays. A lease of 1759 in the Council's possession describes it as 'new built'. The original S. front has a doorway in a boldly projecting two-storied centre bay, with one wide sashed window in each side bay, three corresponding windows on the first floor and two gabled dormer windows in the attic; the extension of the façade to E. and W. by two further bays on each side is secondary. The projecting bay may have been inspired by that of the Old House (12). The two ground-floor windows and the central window on the first floor have segmental gauged brick heads, the other first-floor windows have flat heads, and all five openings have triple keystones. The side bays and the sides of the centre bay are capped with moulded wooden cornices with modillions; in the centre bay the same cornice forms an open pediment. The central doorway is surmounted by a fanlight and a segmental hood on scrolled consoles. Internally the original plan has been changed and the stairs, which must originally have been in the central passage, have been transferred to the E. part of the house; the passage has been robbed of half its former width to enlarge the W. room. The stairs have close strings, Tuscan newels and turned balusters. The E. extension, No. 3, incorporates, at the rear, a room which was originally the service wing of No. 2. The remodelling of No. 2 probably took place when the E. and W. extensions were built, c. 1820.

(60) House, No. 10, stands to the S. of Monument (9) but is entered through an alley from The Plocks. It is an early postfire building, of red brick in Flemish bond, and of two storeys and five bays. To the S. is a 19th-century one-bay extension, and the two-storied porch at the centre of the E. front may have been added at the same period. The four sashed windows on each storey of the E. front, symmetrically disposed about the porch, have flat gauged brick heads; above the ground-floor openings is a brick plat-band of three courses. The original plan consisted of two rooms divided by a central chimney-stack, with a small vestibule between the stack and the central doorway. From the entrance, a passage, parallel to the front wall and lit by the two southern ground-floor windows, leads to the stairs, adjacent to the S. wall. The N. ground-floor room contains original fittings. A centrally placed chimneypiece, with fluted pilasters and a panelled overmantel with scrolled cheekpieces, is flanked by doorways with moulded and eared architraves; the E. doorway is blind and at the centre of the N. wall is another blind doorway. The windows have moulded architraves and panelled shutters; the moulded ceiling cornice is of wood. The small entrance vestibule is divided from the passage to the S. by an archway with fluted pilasters. The stairs rise in a single flight; they have closed strings and turned balusters with moulded handrails, the latter being partly set into the containing walls to form blind balustrades. (Demolished.)

(61) House, No. 12, near the corner of Salisbury Street, is the shell of a late 18th-century house with a header-bonded N. front. The whole ground floor has been gutted to make a shop but the first floor survives. On the N. front are three sashed windows with red brick quoins and gauged brick flat arches with keystones. The moulded stone sills continue as a string-course across the façade. The mansard roof has a panelled eaves soffit and contains two dormer windows.

Coupar House, see Monument (8).

Lime Tree House, see Monument (9).

Salisbury Street

Bastard's map shows that the whole street was burned down in 1731 except for Ryves's Almshouses (7) and a few buildings on the outskirts of the town. The post-fire houses are smaller than those in the Market Place and in the W. part of East Street. Unless otherwise described, the façades are of blue-brick headers, with openings framed in red brick and with red gauged brick window heads. Remodelling of the shops has destroyed the ground plans of most houses but many of the first-floor plans can be recovered; they usually conform to the standard Group (ii) or (iii) pattern. A common 19th-century modification was to convert the winding stairs into straight flights.

East side:—

The W. elevations of Monuments (62) to (70) appear in the illustration facing p. 38.

(62) Houses, Nos. 2 and 4, are two-storey post-fire buildings with shops on the ground floor. No. 2 has three unequally spaced bays capped by a moulded brick eaves cornice; to the S. are two more bays, continuous with No. 2 but belonging to Monument (56). No. 4, of four bays, has an eaves cornice of three projecting courses of unmoulded brick and two gabled dormers in the tiled roof.

(63) Houses, Nos. 6 and 8, probably date from the early post-fire period. They were originally united in an approximately symmetrical five-bay elevation but the two N. bays, No. 8, have been altered beyond recognition. Above the ground storey the whole W. front is hung with mathematical tiles simulating header bricks; above is a moulded wooden cornice. In No. 6, to the S., the ground storey is capped by a coved plaster pentice, tiled above; this shelters an 18th-century shop-front comprising two shallow bow windows and a central doorway. Inside No. 6 the original plan survives, the house having always contained a shop. A straight staircase, entered from the through-passage on the N. side of the shop, occurs in the N.E. corner of the plan. On the first floor are two rooms, that to the S. having two windows, the other room one window. Only the S. room has a fireplace, the sole chimney being against the S. wall. No. 8 has been altered beyond recovery.

(64) Houses, Nos. 10–16, are a group of three-storey twobay houses of the post-fire period. The ground and first floors have been altered to form shops but the original disposition of the rooms is preserved on the second floor. The Group (iii) plan is common to all except No. 14, which is of Group (ii). No. 16, at the N. end, comprises two Group (iii) dwellings each of one bay with a common chimney-stack. Between Nos. 12 and 14 there is a service-passage leading through to the rear. Above the mid 19th-century shop-fronts the elevation of each house differs. No. 10, to the S., is of blue brick in header bond with red brick dressings and chaînage. No. 12 is of red brick in Flemish bond with flat brick heads to its first-floor windows; the heads of the second-floor openings are masked by the eaves cornice. No. 14, of red brick in Flemish bond, has elliptical-headed windows with moulded stone sills and rendered architraves with impost-blocks and keystones; above the first-floor windows is a moulded brick string-course. The moulded brick eaves cornice is continuous with that of No. 12. No. 16 is in Flemish bond with red stretchers and blue headers.

(65) House, No. 18, is of the post-fire period; above a modern shop the W. front is of red brick with an occasional blue header. On the first floor, two three-light sashed windows with pilaster strips and dentil cornices replace the three original windows, of which the bricked-up centre opening remains visible. The second floor retains three windows, the middle one blind. Adjacent to the N. is a carriage-way, above which is a large room lit by a late 18th-century bow window.

(66) Houses, Nos. 20 and 22, are small two-storey post-fire buildings, each of two bays. The ground floors have been converted into modern shops.

(67) Houses, Nos. 24 and 26, possibly originally a version of Group (iv), seem to be of the mid 18th century. Originally the two houses were nearly uniform but, perhaps at the end of the 18th century, No. 26 was provided with bow windows in place of sashed windows. The gauged brick heads of the original openings are seen on each side of the bow windows.

(68) House, No. 36, is a two-storied post-fire building consisting of two dwellings, that to the S. of two bays, the other of one bay. The ground floor of the S. dwelling is now a shop and there is a service-passage leading through to the rear between it and its neighbour. The ground-floor window of the N. dwelling has a gauged brick head; on the first floor the front is of blue brick. The heads of the first-floor sashed windows are incorporated in a dentilled eaves cornice, above which rises a tiled roof with dormer windows.

(69) House, No. 38, is of the mid 18th century. On the ground floor there is a service-passage to the S. but the rest has been gutted to make a modern shop. The first and attic floors have each two rooms divided by a central chimney-stack; the middle bay of the three-bay W. front is blind. Alfred Stevens (1817–1875) was born in this house.

(70) House, No. 40, is a small Group (ii) house of the mid 18th century apparently converted into a shop during the 19th century. The ground-floor shop-front has two splayed bays flanking a central doorway with a straight hood which continues from side to side and also shelters the entrance to a service-passage on the N. On the first floor a bow window replaces the original centre window and the two outer openings are blocked; on the second floor the centre window is blocked while the outer openings remain. At the top is an enriched cornice. The rear first-floor room and the front second-floor room have 18th-century wooden chimney-pieces.

(71) House, No. 52, of two storeys with attics, has a rendered W. front of three bays. On the ground floor is a 19th-century shop-front but the first floor has three small sashed windows with thick glazing bars and exposed boxes, suggesting that the house goes back to the mid 18th century. The gabled N. elevation has no window on ground and first floors but a Venetian window in the attic. A later 18th-century house to the E. became part of No. 52 in the first half of the 19th century, when doors were cut through the party wall; its tiled mansard roof is parallel with the slated roof of the first house and is joined to it by a common gutter.

Ryves's Almshouses, see Monument (7).

(72) Salisbury House, at the corner of Salisbury Street and Damory Street, has recently been demolished. Bastard's town plan shows it as having escaped the fire of 1731 and it is likely to have been built c. 1700. The W. front, of dark red brickwork in Flemish bond, was of two storeys and three widely spaced bays. The central doorway had narrow pilasters supporting an open-pediment hood with a fanlight below it. The windows were sashed and the N. ground-floor window appears at one time to have been a doorway. The roof was tiled. The N. front had single sashed windows on the ground, first and attic floors, the last in a dormer. The S. elevation was in two parts; to the W., the S. end of the W. range was faced with mathematical tiles; to the E. was a two-storied early 19th-century S.E. wing, with walls of blue header bricks with red brick dressings and with two Venetian windows, one on the ground floor and one on the first floor. Inside, the plan consisted of four main rooms, three of approximately equal size in the W. range and a slightly smaller room in the S.E. wing. The middle room of the W. range contained an open-string staircase with scroll spandrels, plain balusters and Tuscan newel posts. The house seems to have evolved in three stages, the N. bay of the W. range having been originally a small cottage with one room in each storey, probably with service rooms to the E. To this cottage, some time before 1731, were added the centre and S. rooms of the W. range; the S.E. room may have been added c. 1830.

West side:—

(73) House, No. 1, probably dates from about the middle of the 18th century. On the E. front (see illustration facing p. 38) a modern shop is surmounted by two storeys each of two bays; at the top is an enriched modillion cornice. Internally, traces of a passage are seen on the N. side of the shop and the original plan seems to have been of Group (ii). The first floor consisted originally of a two-windowed front room and a smaller back room beside the stairs, but the front room is now divided into two.

(74) House, No. 3, has an E. front closely resembling (73) but independently designed, as its differently moulded and slightly lower cornice shows. Internally it has been completely rebuilt.

(75) House, No. 13, has a rendered front with a single bow window on each of the two upper storeys, but these are mid 19th-century alterations and the original 18th-century E. front was probably of brick, perhaps with two windows on each floor, like Monument (76).

(76) House, No. 15, of two bays and three storeys, has an early 19th-century shop front, and 18th-century sashed windows on the two upper floors. The first-floor windows have segmental heads; those of the second floor come directly under the cornice, in which brick-on-edge dentils are surmounted by a wooden corona. The first floor has a Group (ii) plan. The stairs and the fireplace of the first-floor room are of the 19th century.

(77) House, No. 17, is two-bayed and three-storied and probably almost contemporary with No. 15 although of taller proportions and with modernised windows. The ground-floor plan is of Group (ii), modified by a service-passage leading through to the rear on the S. side; the original winding staircase remains at the N.W. corner.

(78) Houses, Nos. 19 and 21, are paired and have a common chimney-stack; they are two-storied and probably date from the mid 18th century. On the ground floor the party-wall has been removed but the two staircases are preserved, back-to-back, against the W. wall. To the S. of No. 19 is a service-passage. The E. front has a modern shop-front on the ground floor and on the first floor each house has a bow window, perhaps of the 19th century.

(79) House, No. 25, is of two bays and three storeys with an attic. After a period during which the first floor had a single bay window the original 18th-century design of two sashed windows has recently been restored. A second-floor string-course of gauged brick has shaped ends set in a little way from the sides of the façade. The ground floor is modern, but the typical Group (ii) plan survives on the first floor.

(80) House, No. 29, is two-bayed and of two storeys with a dormer-windowed attic. Above the sashed first-floor windows is a moulded and coved plaster eaves cornice. The servicepassage which formerly passed along the S. side of the shop is said by the owner to have been removed in 1899. The first floor has the usual Group (ii) plan and the E. room contains a late 18th-century fireplace flanked by alcoves.

(81) House, No. 31, has a cornice continuous with that of the foregoing and the two houses are probably contemporary. About 1830 the E. front was rendered and a single window was put in place of the original pair. The ground floor is a shop but the Group (ii) plan, with a winding stair in the N.E. corner, is preserved on the first floor.

(82) House, No. 33, of two bays and two storeys, stands on the corner of Bryanston Street and has a hipped roof. The shop-front seems to be of the early 19th century; over it the rendered E. front has sashed windows with segmental heads. The N. front is similar to the E. front but of three bays and the first-floor windows have flat heads. The house probably dates from about the middle of the 18th century.

(83) House, No. 45, is of two storeys with attics and has an E. front of five bays. It was built probably as a private house towards the end of the 18th century. Except for a servicepassage to the S. the original ground floor perished when the house became a shop, about 1830, but the first floor retains five sashed windows set symmetrically in a header-bonded brick façade; above them is a panelled brick parapet wall. The rectangular first-floor plan has four rooms, two in front and two at the back, with the staircase between the two back rooms. The open-string stairs have scroll-outlined spandrels and the usual Tuscan-column balustrades.

(84) House, No. 57, is of two storeys with an attic. The two-bay E. front has a 19th-century shop on the ground floor but the first floor retains two original sashed windows with gauged brick aprons, flat heads and triple keystones; above is a moulded brick eaves cornice. The house is probably of the mid 18th century.

(85) House, No. 63, is a two-storied, mid 18th-century building with an E. front of three bays in a mixture of blue and red header-bonded brickwork, with light red brick dressings and a modillion eaves cornice. A two-storied 19th-century bow window in the E. front has the entrance doorway to the S. and a carriage-way to the N.; above, it is flanked by sashed windows with gauged brick flat heads and triple keystones. The doorway has a flat hood on scrolled brackets.

The elevations of Monuments (86) to (89) appear in the illustration facing p. 38.

(86) Houses, Nos. 67, 69, 71 and 73, are small mid 18th-century houses with Group (iii) plans. The red brick front of No. 67 appears to have been rebuilt in the early 19th century; it has a small shop window on the ground floor, the doorway is spanned by an elliptical brick arch of two orders and above it is a deep round-headed niche. No. 69 (see plan, p. 18) has a rendered E. front with an inserted shop-window on the ground floor. The E. ground-floor room has fielded panelling above and below a moulded dado rail, and a small wooden cornice. The E. front of No. 71 is built in a mixture of blue and red bricks in Flemish bond and has a splay-sided, two-storied bow window; inside, early 19th-century embellishments include a cast-iron bucket grate in the first-floor front room. The E. front of No. 73 is rendered and a modern window has recently been inserted on the ground floor. Nos. 71 and 73 have a continuous brick dentil eaves cornice.

(87) House, No. 75, is of the mid 18th century but the E. front, up to the heads of the first-floor windows, has been refaced. The second storey of the five-bay front is in its original state, the sashed windows having gauged brick flat arches with triple keystones. The brickwork is of Flemish bond with blue headers and red stretchers; at the top is a moulded brick cornice. Permission to view the interior was refused.

(88) House, No. 77, is of the mid 18th century and was originally two dwellings, each of two bays; on the E. front a vertical straight joint is visible immediately N. of the central doorway. The S. house has a brick dentil eaves cornice but the N. house has none. Inside, as well as combining them into one house there have been considerable alterations in both parts. In the N. part the chimney is against the W. wall while that of the S. part rises on the S. gable wall; a winding stair to the attic from the first floor is set against the latter chimney, in the S.W. corner of the house.

Dale House, No. 79 Salisbury Street, see Monument (13).

(89) House, No. 81 (Plate 118), is stylistically of the second half of the 18th century and must therefore be a rebuild of the house which Bastard's plan shows as surviving the 1731 fire. It is of three storeys and has a three-bay E. front of red brick, carefully coursed in Flemish bond with thin joints. The central doorway, with fluted Composite pilasters supporting a pedimented entablature, is flanked by wooden two-storied three-sided sashed bay windows, with dentil cornices at each level. The first floor has a small segmental-headed central window and the second floor is lit by three square-headed sashed windows. At the top is a moulded stone cornice and a brick parapet; the cornice continues across the N. gable but on the S. gable, which is rendered, it is only returned. A two-storied service wing of two bays adjoins the N. gable and a later range has been added along the W. side of the house and service wing. The plan is a normal specimen of Group (i) except that it is of three instead of five bays. Inside, most rooms retain original dados, plaster cornices and panelled doors. In the S. ground-floor room, round-headed niches flank the chimney breast and the door-frame has a small entablature. The staircase has two turned balusters to each tread and outline scrolls on the spandrels of the cut string.

West Street

All the façades except the front of No. 13 are built in header bond with red brick dressings and quoins, and have flat rubbed-brick window heads with keystones. No. 13 has been rendered, but the 18th-century fenestration is preserved. Nos. 3 to 7 inclusive have uniform windows and a continuous cornice, with a plaster cyma above brick-on-edge dentils.

South side:—

(90) House, No. 1, has been modernised on the ground floor but the first floor retains one mid 18th-century sashed window and a 19th-century bay window. Above a moulded wooden eaves cornice is a tiled roof with two gabled dormer windows.

(91) House, No. 3, is three-storied and of five bays; it was presumably built soon after the fire. On the ground floor is a handsome mid 19th-century shop-front with fluted Corinthian columns and entablature; over this rise two storeys of sashed windows with moulded wooden sills and label-shaped brick aprons. The cornice and parapet were probably added early in the 19th century in imitation of No. 5, for a print dated 1793 shows the roof with eaves. Internally the building has been extensively remodelled, but an original, or perhaps an early 19th-century staircase occurs above the first floor; it is open-stringed and has Tuscan-column balusters and newels, the latter with ball finials.

(92) Houses, Nos. 5 and 7, are a uniform pair of threestoried, three-bay houses, stylistically of the late 18th century. The sashed first and second-floor windows are set at the same level as in No. 3 and have similar keystones, but the sills are unmoulded and have no aprons. The double façade has red brick quoins at either end and is capped by a brick and stone dentil cornice with a brick parapet above.

(93) Houses, Nos. 9 and 11, of three storeys, were probably built soon after 1731, the former with four bays and the latter with three. The ground floors now have modern shop-fronts, but seven equally spaced sashed windows open in the first and second storeys of the N. front, part of which is crowned by a moulded plaster cornice of egg-and-dart mouldings with scrolled modillions. On the first floor the W. house retains the original Group (ii) plan. The rooms were redecorated early in the 19th century but a few minor 18th-century features survive. The E. house was destroyed by fire in 1949 but the N. façade is preserved.

(94) House, now the Crown and Anchor Hotel, stands in the curve of West Street and has an irregular plan. Although faced with modern imitation half-timbering the three-storied N. front probably dates from the second half of the 18th century. The doorway, near the centre, has two segmental-headed sashed windows to the W. and a three-light sashed window to the E. On the first floor are five segmental-headed windows with sashes with thick glazing bars, apparently original; the second floor has similar openings, two of them blind. The doorway opens into a passage which passes through the house from front to back, leading to the stairs which are against the rear wall. To the E. of the passage a front and a back room have now been united into one; to the W., where is now a single large room, the original plan is not recoverable. Apart from a few Tuscan-column balusters on the first-floor landing the stairs are modern, although probably in their original position. Some bedrooms retain fragments of original cornice, dado-rail and fielded panelling.

(95) House, No. 27, is of red brick in three storeys and has a W. front of two bays; it is probably of the second half of the 18th century. The doorway has a 19th-century fluted architrave developing into scroll brackets which carry a pedimental wooden hood. The first-floor sashed windows have gauged brick heads with keystones. Above is a plat-band which terminates at each end 9 ins. from the corner; over this are two second-floor windows, equal in width to those below but squatter; their heads coincide with a brick dentil cornice. The interior was greatly altered, and some early 18th-century woodwork was probably inserted, when the house became a masonic lodge at the end of the 19th century.

(96) Assembly Rooms, now a garage, stand on the E. side of West Street, near the N. end of the causeway which leads to Blandford Bridge (3). The building is two-storied and has walls of Flemish-bonded red brickwork, and tile-covered hipped roofs. It is possible that the adjacent house to the N. (95) was originally part of the same complex; the brickwork is similar and the façades are of equal height and until recently had similar brick cornices. The ground floor of the assemblyroom building appears originally to have had open arcaded sides; on the first floor the remains of a spacious and lofty ballroom (56 ft. by 29 ft.) are now used as a store. The building appears to date from the end of the 18th century.

The W. front has been greatly altered; the ground-floor arcade has been replaced by a wide garage doorway and the first-floor fenestration has been extended into a single window, the jambs of which probably represent the outside jambs of narrower openings. The S. elevation has, in the lower storey, three segmental brick arches with stone key and impost blocks on rectangular brick piers; to the E. the arcade continues in the form of a half arch which abuts against the N.W. corner of the adjoining house (97). The archway nearest the street is now blocked and the other three openings are partly blocked and partly glazed. On the first floor are three windows, corresponding with the three arches of the lower storey; the centre window is round-headed and has a gauged brick archivolt, a stone sill, stone imposts and a keystone; the side windows are similar but square-headed, with gauged brick heads; that to the E. is blocked. The N. elevation is obscured by adjacent buildings but several of the ground-floor segmental arches can be seen internally; a chimney breast projects at the centre. The E. wall has three segmental arches at ground level and a large round-headed window on the first floor.

The interior decorations have now completely perished but parts of the plaster ceiling of the ballroom were still intact in 1953, although much damaged. A rectangular central panel, decorated at the corners and in the middle of each long side with rococo ornament, was surrounded by a double cove rising from a wall cornice of egg-and-dart mouldings, and fluted modillions alternating with paterae. Of the stairs which led up to the ballroom no trace remains.

(97) Cliff View was built soon after 1731 but has since been much altered. Originally the house was of two storeys, with a three-bay W. front and a Group (i) plan; a single-storied service wing projected to the E. At the end of the 18th century the Assembly Room (96) was built against the N.W. corner and a third storey was added to the W. front; other accretions at the rear subsequently caused the service wing to be included in an enlarged rectangular plan. A front porch and ground-floor bay windows were added late in the 19th century. The W. front, separated from West Street by a garden, is of Flemishbonded brickwork with rusticated plaster quoins at the corners. The quoin to the N. ceases at second-floor level, where the original eaves lay, but the S. quoin was heightened to include the second storey, c. 1800. On the S. front the original gable can be distinguished, by different bonding, from the spandrels which were added when the second storey was built. Internally, the front ground-floor rooms have mid 18th-century joinery with enriched mouldings, and acanthus cornices. A fireplace surround has a sculptured frieze representing scenes from Aesop's fables. The lower flight of stairs is of the late 19th century, but higher up the stairs have open strings, turned balusters and Tuscan-column newels of 18th-century pattern.

North side:—

The elevations of Monuments (98) to (103) appear in the illustration facing p. 38.

(98) House, No. 2, is of the mid 18th century with a twobay, three-storied S. front in header courses of red brick. The front terminates in a parapet wall with a stone coping, swept up at the angles. The segmental brick arches of the sashed windows have rendered keystones. The ground floor was remodelled in the 19th century to form a shop but the upper floors retain the original plan, together with some fittings and the original staircase from the first to the second floor. The plan is of Group (iii) with the stairs lit by a skylight. The original entrance seems to have been from the service-passage which passes through to the rear, in the adjacent house (53) on the E. The staircase has an open string with scroll spandrels and two turned balusters to each tread. The front rooms on the first and second floors retain original fielded panelling in two heights, and wooden ceiling cornices.

(99) House, No. 4, dates from the post-fire period and is faced with blue header bricks, red brick being used for the quoins, the window openings and their flat gauged brick heads. The elevation finishes in a parapet wall above a heavy moulded stone cornice, returned at the ends. The ground floor has been entirely remodelled to form a shop; the upper floors, while retaining the original Group (ii) plan, contain no early fittings. A service-passage passes through the building on the W. side.

(100) Houses, Nos. 6 and 8, are of three storeys and date from the early post-fire period; they present a unified fivebay S. front with an emphasised central bay. This façade embraces two Group (ii) houses, that to the E. of three bays, that to the W. of two. The ground floors contain modern shop fronts but above these the elevation is of blue header bricks with red brick quoins and window surrounds. At the top is a coved plaster cornice, returned at the ends. The middle windows of the first and second floors have round heads with triple keystones and moulded imposts. The other windows have shallow segmental heads and plain keystones, except for the windows beside the central second-floor opening, which have serpentine soffits. On the upper floors the original plan survives. A service-passage to the rear of the building is placed centrally below the party wall between Nos. 8 and 10.

(101) House, No. 10, built soon after the fire, was originally two houses, that to the E. of five bays, the other of two (Plate 115); their elevational details are in most respects identical and they share a common cornice and parapet, but the brickwork of the façade is not continuous. The ground floors have been combined and remodelled to form a shop with a shop-front of c. 1830. The S. front of the W. house is predominantly of purple brick, that of the E. house is of grey brick; red brick is used for quoins and window surrounds in both houses. The middle window on each upper floor of the E. house has a keystone with a mask; all other windows have keystones in which the upper part is decorated with scale ornament while the lower part is fluted. Label-shaped red brick aprons embellished with guttae project below the second-floor sills. The elevation terminates in a moulded dentil cornice, and a parapet wall with projecting panels of red brick. The house shares the service-passage at its E. end with No. 8. The upper storeys have been converted into modern flats and retain no noteworthy features.

(102) House, No. 12 (plan on p. 18), belongs to the early post-fire period and has a Group (ii) plan. The S. front is faced with a random mixture of header bricks; the details are similar to those of No. 10, but the storeys are lower and the cornice is simpler. The ground floor has a 19th-century shop front and the interior was altered when the shop was made, but the service-passage leading through to the rear, on the W., remains. The original staircase survives from the first quarterlanding above ground to the attic. The first-floor rooms contain fielded panelling and the front room has a wooden cornice.

(103) The Three Choughs Inn is of the mid 18th century. The two W. bays of the five-bay S. front are splayed back from the street front. The three storeys of sashed windows are linked by red brick chaînage and the first and second-storey windows have flush aprons of the same colour. Between the two E. ground-floor windows is a blocked opening. The N. elevation is of red brick, and three of the segmental-headed windows have leaded casements in wood surrounds. The tiled roof has a central valley which emerges on the W. The original plan consisted of four rooms set two on each side of a throughpassage running from N. to S., with the staircase at the N. end. A central chimney-stack is set in each E. and W. wall. The building has recently been repaired and the internal arrangements much altered. Between the first and second floors, part of an original winding staircase with Tuscan newels and balusters is preserved. It has a small well and retains three flights with winders. The newels consist of superimposed Tuscan columns separated by square blocks, against which the handrails are stopped; each tread has two turned balusters.

White Cliff Mill Street

East side:—

(104) Cottage, No. 4, is a mid 18th-century artisan's dwelling of Group (v). The single ground-floor room is entered from the street through a doorway in the N. part of the W. front, and a large adjacent window implies that the dwelling was originally a shop. The chimney-stack takes up most of the S. wall but there is space in the S.W. corner for a winding stair against the side of the stack; it leads direct to the single first-floor room, whence other steps wind up to the attic. A scullery occupies a one-storied annex at the rear. (Demolished.)

(105) Cottage, No. 6, is contemporary with (104). It is two-storied and has a two-bay W. front of header brickwork with red brick dressings; the gauged brick flat window heads have triple keystones. Originally the ground floor had a doorway and one small window, but the window was enlarged early in the 19th century; the two sashed first-floor windows and the attic dormer are unchanged. The doorway has a flat hood on simple scroll consoles. Inside, the plan consists of a front room with a small entrance vestibule and staircase to the N., and a back room extending across the width of the house. The first-floor plan is similar. At the back of the house is a long workshop; this and an odd collection of interior woodwork, including a fluted column-shaft, suggest that the cottage was once occupied by a joiner. (Demolished.)

(106) Half Moon Inn, No. 16, is composed of two cottages. The older cottage to the N. is contemporary with (104) and has much the same plan; the other is of the end of the 18th century.

(107) House, No. 26 (Plate 115), preserves many features from the early post-fire period. It is two-storied with an attic and has a W. front of two bays with regularly disposed sashed windows. The front is of header bricks with red brick quoins and dressings, and has at first-floor level a plat-band which ends short of the corners; the eaves have a moulded plastic cornice with vertical fluting. The plan is of Group (ii) with a service-passage leading through to the rear. The doorway, to the S. in the W. front, opens into the service-passage and at the E. end of the passage another doorway opens on a back yard. Internal doorways on the N. side of the service-passage open into the front and back ground-floor rooms. The front room has panelling on two sides and a fireplace in the N.E. corner. The staircase is at the N. end of the narrower back room and thus adjacent to the chimney-stack. The first-floor plan repeats the ground floor except that the rooms extend over the service-passage. The attic has only one room.

(108) Cottages, Nos. 28 and 30, repeat the Group (v) plan of No. 4, but the smaller chimney-breasts suggest a somewhat later date. (Demolished.)

(109) White Cliff House, No. 38, is substantially a mid 18th-century Group (i) house but it was extensively altered c. 1850 and again at the end of the 19th century, to which periods the Venetian windows and pediment-hooded doorway of the W. front may be assigned. Traces of original openings are discernible in the W. front, and an original one-storey service annex in the S.E. quarter of the plan is betrayed by the stretcher-bonded brickwork of the lower part of this wing, the random-bonded upper storey being later. Internally, the partitions between the central vestibule and the two front rooms have been moved N. but the original plan is suggested by a length of plaster cornice at the E. end of the vestibule, which terminates some distance from the N. side wall. The close-string staircase with swelling Tuscan-column newel posts and balusters is probably a mid 19th-century version of the usual 18th-century pattern. Panelling below the window-sills in the S.E. bedroom does not correspond with the present openings and presumably represents an earlier scheme of fenestration. The blocked central first-floor window of the original W. front is seen in a closet which opens out of the N.E. bedroom. The latter has full-height panelling on the S. and E. walls; the woodwork stops short of the N.E. corner but this may be due to enlargement of the room by removal of cupboards on the N. side. A mid 18th-century fireplace surround with pulvinated frieze and scrolled cheek-pieces occurs at the centre of the N. wall in the same room.

West side:—

(110) The King's Arms Hotel, No. 1, was built probably in the mid 18th century as two-storied houses, and was converted into a single property c. 1840. The smaller of the two houses, on the corner of Bryanston Street and White Cliff Mill Street, probably had a S. front of three bays, but only the W. windows remain; the wall is of English-bonded brickwork for abour half the height of the ground storey, and in random bond above that level. To the W. of the S. front is a covered entry to the yard at the back; a perpendicular joint running up to the eaves from the E. abutment of its segmental arch shows that the first-floor room has been extended across the entry. The E. front of the S. house is rendered and has one sashed window centrally in the ground storey and another on the first floor. The N. house fronts White Cliff Mill Street. Its E. front is aligned with that of the S. house and since both have a common plaster revetment the division between the two fronts is indistinguishable, apart from the fact that the windows are set at different levels conforming to the rise of the ground. The entrance to the hotel, at the S. end of the E. front of the N. house, has three stone steps flanked by iron handrails; panelled pilasters flanking the doorway support scrolled brackets and a flat hood. The passage inside originally ran straight through to the yard but it is now interrupted by stairs of c. 1840 which cross it at right angles. The stairs lead to the first-floor room of the S. house, which is now the dining-room. At the W. end this room extends across the covered entry from Bryanston Street.

Eagle House, No. 19, see Monument (14).

(111) Houses, Nos. 21 and 23, are suburban villas of c. 1830, symmetrically designed with pleasing red brick E. fronts of two storeys and three bays; the roofs are slate-covered. The doorways have flat wooden hoods, one of which is supported on slender Gothic shafted columns; on either side are broad sashed windows. The first floors have similar sashed windows on each side and slightly narrower windows over the doorways. Internally, in No. 23, a hall-passage runs from front to back of the square plan, opening half-way along the S. side to a staircase which extends to the S. wall. A doorway under the stairs gives access to the service wing which juts out from the W. part of the S. side. Four rooms open from the T-shaped hallpassage; those in the N.E., S.E. and S.W. corners of the plan are of about equal size, but the N.W. room is larger because it includes the equivalent width of the staircase. Adjacent to the N. are two similar isolated houses and two more, paired; they are probably all of c. 1850.

Noteworthy early 19th-century buildings in Blandford Forum also include the following.—No. 19 East Street is a large isolated house standing well back from the road; according to an inscription discovered during recent works it was built in 1832. On the E. side of Salisbury Street, near the N. end and located between Monuments (7) and (72), are seven threestoried houses of c. 1830–50. The southernmost, No. 76, is brick-fronted, with a symmetrical W. façade of three bays; the ground-floor openings are set in round-headed recesses. Adjacent, but set further back from the road, No. 78 has a rendered, symmetrical W. front of three bays, with a rusticated lower storey and a single order of shallow Doric pilasters embracing the two upper storeys. No. 80, adjacent, is somewhat similar to No. 78 but the pilasters are omitted, the centre bay is slightly recessed, and the doorway has a flat-topped porch supported on two Ionic columns. The other four houses of this group are paired; Nos. 82–84 have rendered fronts and each house is of two bays; in Nos. 86–88 the façade is unified by coupling the doorways and adding blind Palladian windows centrally on the first and second storeys.

The houses of Dorset Street and Orchard Street were built in the first half of the 19th century on the site of a former orchard and gardens between The Close and Salisbury Street. The land is shown on Bastard's town plan and it appears that the two streets follow the line of two former groves of trees; the alley which still cuts northwards from the S.E. corner of Dorset Street to the W. side of Orchard Street existed formerly and appears on the map as a diagonal footpath between the two groves. The short E.-W. street in the same quarter corresponds with the N. boundary of the orchard, and northwards from there the streets change direction and converge on Salisbury Street, crossing the area where Bastard found gardens. The 19th-century development is a mixed one of predominantly two-storied one-bay brick-built terrace houses, mainly with slated roofs and rendered fronts. A few groups of three-storied terraces occur, such as Nos. 28–34 Orchard Street, with a symmetrical rendered elevation, and Nos. 14–20 Dorset Street. Nos. 12 and 22 Dorset Street, and No. 24 Orchard Street are two-storied houses of three bays with central entrances. Damory Street, called Damary Lane on Bastard's map, appears to have had few buildings until the middle of the 19th century, when groups of houses were erected on the E. side; they are of two storeys, with brick walls and slated roofs with wide overhanging eaves. Among them are four groups of terraced houses with paired doorways under concave metal canopies, and two groups of semi-detached houses with similar entrances.

A cottage at 22 Bryanston Street illustrates the continued use of blue all-header brickwork in modest housing, as late as c. 1825.