house

Terraced two-bay single-storey house over raised basement, built 1838. M-profile pitched slate roof having terracotta ridge tiles, shared red brick chimneystack with clay pots, red-brick parapet having cut granite coping. Red brick, laid in Flemish bond, to walls, with cut granite plinth course over rendered wall to basement. Square-headed window openings having granite sills and six-over-six pane timber sliding sash windows. Elliptical-headed door opening with timber doorcase comprising panelled pilasters and scrolled console brackets supporting frieze, timber panelled door and teardrop fanlight. Shared granite steps having cast-iron coal-hole cover and bootscrape to platform. Set back from north side of road, with basement-level front garden. Basement area bounded by rendered plinth wall with granite coping surmounted by wrought-iron railings having decorative cast-iron collars, with curved alignment to entrance steps. Original half-height matching pedestrian gate to basement. Basement door beneath entrance steps.

This house retains its original façade composition and many historic features including its well-executed door surround, tear drop fanlight and ironmongery which are characteristic of its early/mid-nineteenth century date. Pleasants Street, along with its neighbouring roads forms part of early Victorian neighbourhood of small genteel townhouses located to the west of Camden Street. The shared scale and features of the houses contribute to the unified residential neighbourhood character of the locality. The streetscape is further enhanced by the uniform retention of elegant iron railings, which attest to the skill and artisanship in mass production of crime in the early nineteenth century. The street is named after the philanthropist Thomas Pleasants (1729-1818) who donated money towards the establishment of the nearby Meath Hospital. This house, along with its neighbours Nos. 1-10, were the first buildings constructed on the street in the late 1830s. The terrace of buildings is historically called Bell Villa, as inscribed on the plaque on the facade of No. 1, with a carved hand pointing in an easterly direction towards the rest of the street.