page_title: Roundhill Crescent
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: Roundhill Crescent / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: 19 and 21 Roundhill Crescent, Round Hill, City of Brighton and Hove, England. Part of a terrace of middle-class housing built in the 1860s. Listed at Grade II by English Heritage (IoE Code 481158)
context_page_description: Roundhill Crescent is a late-19th-century housing development in Round Hill, an inner suburb of the English coastal city of Brighton and Hove. Partly developed in the 1860s with large terraced houses on a steeply sloping open hillside, the crescent—which "curves and changes height dramatically along its length"—was finished two decades later and now forms the centrepiece of the Round Hill conservation area. Smaller houses completed the composition in the 1880s, and England's first hospital for the treatment of mental illness was founded in the crescent in 1905. The five original sets of houses from the 1860s have been listed at Grade II by English Heritage for their architectural and historical importance, and the crescent occupies a prominent place on Brighton's skyline.
context_section_description: Roundhill Crescent forms a "majestic sweep" on the steep, visually prominent hillside, which can be seen from many parts of north and east Brighton.  The "fine curving terraces of Regency-style houses" at each end of the road, which started the development in 1865, were joined by smaller houses in a more modest, characteristically Victorian style over the next 20 years.  The older houses on the crescent stand out in their "attempt [at] a little grandeur in the Regency mould" in an area of otherwise small and unpretentious housing.  Coming about 50 years after that architectural style's heyday, they represent its latest appearance in Brighton.
  The groups of houses built in the mid-1860s, and now with listed status, are now numbered 1–13, 19 and 21, 23–37, 69 and 71 and 101–113.  Only the group between 1 and 19 inclusive and the pair at 69 and 71 appeared on a mid-1870s map of Brighton, but all sources agree that the five sets of houses are of the same date.  Numbers 1–13 are at the lowest point on the southwest side, after which the crescent begins to "curve and change height dramatically along its length, rising and then falling steeply again by the time numbers 101–113 are reached.  Common features of the houses include stuccoed façades carved to look like ashlar, ornate cast-iron balconies, parapets, sash windows and cast-iron railings separating them from the pavement.
  The group at numbers 1–13 rise to three storeys and each have a three-window range.  Each house is separated from its neighbour by pilasters running the full height of the building to a cornice.  The bottom part of each pilaster is rusticated.  The entrance and windows have decorative mouldings to their archivolt and architraves respectively.  Each house has a large cast-iron balcony outside the first-floor window and some ironwork at second-floor level, forming guards outside the bracketed windows.  Many of the mouldings, except at number 1, are no longer in their original condition.  Number 1 also has dormer windows in the roof, and number 13 has a side entrance in an arched porch.
  Numbers 19 and 21, originally part of the same terrace, are similar in style.  Number 21 has lost much of its exterior decoration: none of the windows have mouldings or cast-iron window guards.  Number 19 has an arched side entrance under an architraved porch.  The houses at numbers 23–37 are also of the same style, but with two windows on each floor; all retain their original features, but some of the decorative mouldings have been modified on three of the buildings.
  Numbers 69 and 71 are again of three storeys with a three-window range, stucco-clad and topped by a cornice and parapet in front of the roof.  The treatment of the top of the dividing pilaster on number 71 is different: it lacks a bracket to the cornice.  As with the other 1860s houses, they both have first-floor balconies with foliage-pattern ironwork.
  The seven houses at numbers 101–113 also have three windows to each of three storeys, and the same general layout and materials.  Some details are different on individual houses: there is no rustication to the pilasters at numbers 105 and 107; the cast-iron second-floor window-guards are absent on three houses; some mouldings are altered or absent; one of the pilasters at number 103 is decorated with an urn; and number 101's entrance is in a porch at the side.
  The non-listed houses on the northwest side are mostly of the same height but lack many of the features shared by the listed buildings, in particular the "highly decorative" balconies.  Eaves supported on brackets take the place of parapets as well.  The southeast side of the crescent has two-storey houses with some variation in style.  Many have lost their original slate roofs, but some 19th-century dormer windows have been retained.  The insertion of modern exterior features such as replacement doors, windows and roofs has been restricted by an Article Four Direction, covering the whole Round Hill conservation area, since 2000.
caption: 19 and 21 Roundhill Crescent
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