York Historic Environment Record

Nominate for locally listing due to the row of cottages’ architectural and historical significance as a work of the Brierley firm of the early C20 period, with characteristic architectural treatment of restrained brickwork with rusticated brick quoin embellishments for end gables, pitched roofs with oversailing eaves, and, originally, use of 'three over six' timber windows; particularly nice as a scheme of "married attendants" workers’ cottages and contrasting with Brierley’s more familiar large house and civic buildings output; and as a surviving component of the County Asylum estate. Having suffered from a few unsympathetic alterations (small extensions, insertion of French doors, PVC windows), the row's architectural character remains strong: internally, all the principal rooms face south, with service rooms on the north side; they are unusual in their T-shape and having two yards, north and south. The site of the cottages is hidden from the main Shipton Road and the arrangement of gardens on their south side which acts as the architectural "front", across which residents have rite of passage across each other’s property, giving a particular communal spirit to these buildings. The north side features little yards with fuel stores and acts, effectively, as the main entrances, with a common lane, and then garths facing across the lane. The landscape setting of the cottages is charming and likely relates to the cottages’ relationship with the former asylum; to the south, open land leading to an orchard (assumed to have been part of the asylum grounds). The setting has been diminished by encroaching, unsympathetic development of recent years, in particular the estate which was built on sale of the hospital site. The cottages have been cited in the revised version of North Yorkshire Pevsner, edited by Jane Grenville, as valuable assets. Their construction is recorded in the Clifton Hospital Archives at the Borthwick Institute and there is a plan of the elevation of the row with details filled in for No 1.