History

Residential development in the northern area of Roath occurred in the period 1890-1914. The Marquess of Bute had donated land around Roath Brook for a public park in 1887, beginning an overall strategy for development of a high-quality residential district, to which the setting of Roath Park was instrumental. Houses were let on 99 year leases and proximity to the park made it a desirable location, allowing higher ground rents to be charged. The Bute Estate exercised careful control by employing its estate architect, E.W.M. Corbett, to provide designs for houses, ensuring consistency of character and status. These were erected by various local contractors, who introduced their own individual variations by selecting a wide range of materials available from builders' merchants. These included freestone mouldings from Bath stone quarries, pressed red bricks from Ruabon in Denbighshire, and decorative tiles from Midlands firms such as Maw & Co of Jackfield and Gibbons Hinton & Co of Brierley Hill, in addition to standard items such as iron balustrades, polished granite shafts and fish-scale tiles.

Houses in Ninian Road cost between £700 and £1470 to build. The north-west end, Nos 75-110, were built opposite Roath Park Pleasure Gardens, Nos 75-81 between 1897 and 1902.

Exterior

A reflected pair of 2½-storey 2-bay houses in the freestyle influenced by Norman Shaw's Old English style, of brick with painted freestone dressings and slate roof with brick end stacks. The entrances are in the narrower inner bays beneath upper-storey balconies. The recessed, open-fronted porches have elliptical arches with continuous mouldings, decorative tiles to the dado and half-glazed panel doors with side and overlights. The balconies project on moulded corbels with wall shafts and have neo-classical cast iron balustrades. They have canopies under catslide roofs, with scrolled ironwork beneath the eaves. The balconies have half-glazed doors. The wider outer gabled bays have 2-storey 3-light canted bay windows incorporating sashes, with coloured glass above the transoms in the upper storey. Gables project on ornate diagonal wooden brackets on short brick wall shafts, and are tile hung with bands of fish-scale tiles. They have 5-light attic windows, above which the gables project further on brackets. The houses share a single gabled roof dormer to the centre.

The L side wall (No 78) is rock-faced to the lower storey and roughcast above. It has an external brick stack R of centre, L of which is a bay window with brick dressings, 2 sash windows above it in brick surrounds, and triangular dormer. A lower rear wing has an oriel window. The R side wall (No 79) is of rock-faced stone in the lower storey and rendered above, and has a canted bay window. Upper R is an attic window with gablet. The houses have hipped roofs to the rear and wings with lower eaves line and half-hipped roofs and brick stacks.

Reasons for Listing

The residential district centred around Roath Park is of exceptional interest for its late Victorian and Edwardian middle-class housing, and is one of the 2 finest such developments in Wales.

External Links

• Cadwr Listing
• Wikidata Q29503539

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  London 6: Westminster (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England): Westminster v. 6
• 
  Huddersfield in 50 Buildings
• 
  Hertfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Old House Handbook 2 Books Bundle Collection (Old House Handbook: A Practical Guide to Care and Repair,Old House Eco Handbook: A Practical Guide to Retrofitting for Energy-Efficiency & Sustainability)
• 
  London 3: North West: North West v. 3 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Period Property Manual (New Ed)