The Estate
William Bolton bought the land in 1795 and sold it to Robert Gunter in 1807. The Gunter family developed it through their surveyor George Godwin junior, later joined by his brother Henry, and the bulk was built between 1850 and 1876 in a largely Italianate style around two set pieces, each focused on a church: The Boltons itself and Redcliffe Square.
Godwin described the site in 1849 as oval, two hundred and twenty feet long and a hundred and fifteen wide, intended to form the centre of a planted enclosure about which houses would be built. The appraisal notes drily that it was not really oval as Godwin stated, but the same shape it is today.
The east side was built by H. W. Atkinson in 1851 and 1852, all to one design, with Doric porches to the far side of each house. The west side followed between 1857 and 1860 by J. Spicer, in the same style but with variation. Numbers 15 and 28 are the only detached houses in the group. Everything else is a pair, and the pair rather than the house is the architectural unit.
The brick is worth noticing. Most terraces and many villa pairs are gault brick, brought from Kent and Sussex and more expensive than London stock. The appraisal reads its use as a deliberate signal of the status the developers wanted for the estate. Return elevations, by contrast, are plain stock brick by design: the stucco is a front-only treatment, and wrapping it round a flank is a historical error.
The Gaps Are the Point
This appraisal gives gaps their own section and their own map, and it is the most directive part of the document.
A key feature of the detached houses and their semi-detached relatives is the gap between the houses or pairs, giving the impression of quality and spaciousness. The gaps allow glimpses of garden trees, create a breathing space in a dense urban environment, and let the pairs be read as one unit as originally intended. Where they have been infilled, the appraisal says the pairs take on the appearance of terraces and their distinctive setting is harmed.
It names the failures. Numbers 92 and 94 Redcliffe Gardens, where a particularly unfortunate link has been added between two detached houses. Numbers 15 to 23 Tregunter Road, where the defining space between some of the villas has been lost. In Gilston Road, sides have been extended so that some semi-detached pairs now look like terraces, harming both their status as a house type and the rhythm of the street. In The Boltons itself, houses built with single storey side additions beyond the entrances have since been extended upwards.
The setting is treated as equal in significance to the architecture: the matching balustrades following the curve of the ellipse, the solid square gate piers matching the columned porches, the substantial gardens front and back, and the space between each pair.
Painting, and a Difference Between Neighbouring Streets
Article 4 Direction 12, dated September 1976, covers numbers 1 to 28 The Boltons and withdraws Classes I and II of the development order in full. Extensions, porches, curtilage buildings, hardstanding for vehicles, gates, fences and walls, new vehicular access, and the painting of the exterior all require express planning permission.
Direction 13, covering Tregunter Road, Gilston Road and parts of Cresswell, withdraws only Class II paragraphs one and two. On its face exterior painting is not caught there. Two streets a few hundred yards apart, and a different answer to the same question, which is worth establishing before a decorator is booked rather than after.
On colour, the appraisal's position is that when built it was not intended to paint buildings at all, and even stucco, which was meant to imitate stone, was only painted later. Where a whole terrace was painted many years ago in a consistent scheme, as on the south of Hollywood Road, that paint has become part of the street's character. Where individual houses have been painted within a pair or a terrace it is very harmful, and it names two: 78 Drayton Gardens, one of a red brick pair painted cream, and numbers 9 and 12 The Boltons, painted yellow.
In Seymour Walk it records that none of the houses would originally have been painted above ground floor level at all. Milborne Grove and Priory Walk are the stated exception, where pastel colours are said to suit the houses.
- 1 to 28 The Boltons
- Direction 12. Extensions, hardstanding, boundaries, vehicle access and exterior painting all need permission.
- Tregunter and Gilston Road
- Direction 13. Boundary treatments and access only. Painting is not caught by this direction.
- The Little Boltons, Harley Gardens
- Directions 81A and 81B. Hardstanding, and alteration of a window or door in an elevation fronting the highway.
- Redcliffe Road and Mews
- Direction 81C also removes the right to work on external brickwork on the highway elevation.
Roofs, Including One Nobody Expects
The villa pairs have shared hipped slate roofs with deep overhanging eaves and prominent chimney stacks. Redcliffe Square has the most unusual roofline in the area, a French Renaissance composition of slated mansard with stuccoed dormers and round lucarne windows, many of which the appraisal records as lost to replacement, to the detriment of the set piece.
There is also a roof type peculiar to this area, designed by the builders Corbett and McClymont. The tops of some houses were sealed by two or three courses of plain tiles laid in cement over arched wooden ribs, the whole then rendered to give an impermeable and very heavy roof, slightly convex in section, thought to resist fire. It is easy to destroy unrecognised during a re-roofing.
On modern mansards the wording is a precedent test: they are of much less heritage value, but do form part of the character in some instances where they have been applied to the majority of the houses in a whole street. Original roof forms are of great heritage significance, particularly as a group, and a roof extension standing alone in a run of unaltered roofs, or differing in design, is identified as negative. The terraces west of The Little Boltons have had mansards added not always with regard to the uniformity of the group.
The appraisal contains a roof map distinguishing historic pitched, parapet and butterfly, historic mansard, modern roof and modern dormer. It is the practical starting point for any roof job here.
Garages, Front Gardens and What the Appraisal Wants Reversed
One sentence here goes further than anything comparable in the borough. One of the most harmful alterations seen in this conservation area is where garages have been inserted into the house structure itself, and it is highly desirable that this should be reversed wherever possible.
Front gardens are treated the same way. Where greenery has been removed for car parking or through the loss of trees there is a palpable loss of quality and historic character. Milborne Grove is named as badly marred by the loss of verdant gardens and permanent boundaries to hard standings. Even in The Boltons and Gilston Road, some characteristic stucco boundary treatments are missing.
The directions reinforce it: hardstanding rights are withdrawn at 1 to 28 The Boltons and again at Harley Gardens and The Little Boltons.
Lightwells are treated as part of the public realm rather than as private space. In the older parts of the area basements tend to be concealed in front gardens; in the later parts the lightwells sit immediately next to the pavement and form a continuous feature along the street. Structures or clutter within them, and modern coal cellar and basement doors, are identified as harm to the street as well as to the house.
What the Appraisal Does Not Cover
Basement excavation. Unlike the Chelsea Park and Carlyle appraisal a few streets east, this document says nothing about new basements. It deals only with the historic lightwell as a townscape feature.
That does not mean a basement here is unconstrained. It means the control sits entirely in the Local Plan and the borough-wide direction rather than in anything area-specific: Policy CD11, which this appraisal still calls CL7 because it was written in 2015 and the policy has since been renumbered, and the Article 4 direction that removed permitted development rights for basement extensions across the whole borough from April 2016.
Article 4 is also absent from the text. Neither this appraisal nor its Chelsea Park neighbour mentions directions anywhere, so the register has to be checked separately against the specific address. Given that Directions 12 and 13 reach different distances on adjoining streets, that check is not a formality.