Heritage Statement for a Grade II* house by John Wood the Elder in Bath.

A stalled application on a neglected building.

The upper floors of the house had been empty for some time and were in poor condition, with damp from failed gutters damaging the lime plaster. A previous owner had replaced windows at the rear with uPVC and fitted a uPVC patio door on to a timber deck. New owners wanted to refurbish the upper floors as a single home: new kitchen and bathrooms, sound and fire separation from the office below, a new fire detection system, repairs to the plaster, and timber windows in place of the uPVC.

An application for listed building consent had been submitted in September 2018 and had not been decided. The council’s Conservation Officer had concerns about the proposals and wanted an assessment of the building’s significance before going further.

That is a reasonable request for a building of this grade. Under s.16(2) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 the council must have special regard to the desirability of preserving a listed building and any features of special interest it possesses. In a house that has been altered, repaired after bombing and subdivided, nobody can apply that test until they know which fabric is Wood’s, which is later, and which is modern.

Reading the fabric with the Conservation Officer.

We inspected the house from basement area to roof in February 2019 and walked it with the Conservation Officer. We traced the site from a map of 1572, John Wood’s own survey of 1735, town maps of 1795 and 1852 and the Ordnance Survey maps of 1883 and 1938, and used the 1942 bomb damage map to understand what the building had been through.

Three findings shaped the scheme. The first concerned the wide opening at the rear that held the patio door. By comparing it with the closet wings of the neighbouring houses we showed that it was the surviving opening of a lost upper section of the closet wing, with its stone jambs still in place. The Conservation Officer agreed that the opening was original. The right course was therefore to keep it and replace the door within it, not to block it down to a window.

The second concerned the roof. The timbers of the front attic room carry the marks of modern woodworking machinery and are of modern dimensions, which points to post-war repair and not to original construction. The third concerned the wall panelling on the second floor. The Conservation Officer confirmed that the same panelling survives in the house next door, so the panelling round the walls was kept while a later partition between the two rooms was upgraded for sound.

The Heritage Statement.

We first set out the evidence and the options in a discussion paper for the council in March 2019, and the drawings were revised in May and June in response. Our Heritage Statement followed in June 2019 and was submitted in support of the application. It described the history of the terrace and the house, illustrated the fabric room by room, and graded what it found: the plan form, staircase, cornices and historic joinery as highly significant, and the modern kitchen, bathrooms, fire surrounds and partitions as of no heritage interest.

It then assessed each element of the work against that grading. Service runs would follow existing routes. Fire detection would be wireless to avoid chasing historic plaster. Sound and fire separation would be achieved from above, keeping the lath and plaster ceilings and relaying the old floorboards. Damp-damaged plaster would be repaired in lime. The uPVC would come out.

Consent granted.

Listed building consent was granted in August 2019. The council’s report records that there had been concerns with the initial application, that these had been addressed, and that the scheme “represents an opportunity to amend some past failures in the care and maintenance of this important historic building”. The officer concluded that the works would help to preserve the listed building and, by bringing it back into full use, enhance the conservation area. Historic England was consulted and did not comment in detail. A condition requires the details of the new windows and doors to be approved before they are installed.