ColchesterHistoricBuildingsForum

Bicentenary house
No 5 North Hill is 200 years old this year - well, at least this is the age of the front of the building because a date applied to the brickwork conveniently tells us so.
As was commonly done in the Georgian period, houses could be made to look more modern with the addition of a brick front. If this is what happened at No 5 North Hill, the result was to give an existing house a pleasing and fashionable appearance.
The house is relatively big because it has four levels, i.e. a basement, ground and first floors and attics lit by dormer windows. The front has sash windows each with twelve small panes, a parapet with a dentiled brick cornice, and small bowed balcony rails to the first-floor windows. The wooden door case surrounding the door has a decorated frieze above it and panelled sides. A large square opening on the left allowed horse-drawn carriages to reach the rear of the building where there was presumably a stable.
The 'blind' window above the door could have been blocked deliberately to reduce the window tax due on the building. But this would mean that the date on the brickwork is unlikely to be original because it could only have been added after the window had been blocked. Alternatively, the blind window could have been a design feature arising from the desire for symmetry favoured in Georgian times.

Large Victorian house with lots of character occupying a prominent corner site on Lexden Road. Built in 1877. Been the the home of Oxford House School since 1984. Great example of High Victorian Gothic. Red brick with stone dressings. Picturesquely irregular plan and elevations, with Gothic windows (including some with plate tracery), gables with decorative bargeboards, steep pitched roof with dormers, and polygonal corner turret. An excellent building of its date, highly decorative, and unspoilt as far as the exterior is concerned. Built for Mr Buck the dentist.

The Turrets, 89 Lexden Road
A picturesque Gothic curiosity with battlements, turrets and Gothic pointed windows. A castellated villa rather than a castle, the Turrets was built in 1817 of plastered brick for Frances Smythies. The architect was probably Robert Lugar (1773-1855), a Colchester-born son of a carpenter. He established himself towards the end of the eighteenth century in London as an architect, and went on to develop a widespread practice as a country-house architect working in different styles including Gothic and extending throughout much of England and into Scotland and Wales. Frances Smythies was a lawyer who served as town clerk for many years like his son of the same name after him.

[Originally called the Villa Franca (JBBBD).]

fifteen Queen Street
No 15 is a well-preserved substantial red brick house with grey brick front apparently as built. It has a slate roof and three storeys, and retains its original double-sash windows, doorcase, canopy and door. There are deep windows on the first floor almost to floor level. and a large window on the ground floor. Not on Monson's map (1848) but on OS map of 1875.
Simon Taylor provided the following information: the parish rate was paid for a "Garden" from 1847 to 1852, but the 1851 Census refers to "one house uninhabited". The first recorded occupant was John Edwin Griffin in 1855.
House built c 1851.
The building, which is adjacent to firstsite, is now managed by firstsite in collaboration with the Arts Council and The Creative Co-op. as a creative community space called 'fifteen Queen Street'.

History
by Simon Taylor
The building in question has been No 15 since 1913 when the numbering of Queen Street was completely revised.
The site adjoins a lane, known as The Chase, forming an extension of Culver Street and leading to lands behind East Hill House. These lands included Berry Field (or Fair Field, in reference to its use as a cattle and horse market during St Denis’ Fair until 1809), and nurseries belonging to the East Hill House estate. The lane was the main access to Berry Field and early photographs show that the entrance was closed by large gates. (Filled hinge holes can still be seen in the surviving south gate post.)
A building is marked on the 1837 Tithe Map on the approximate site of the present building. This earlier building appears to have been largely pulled down at this time [1846], with George Round paying the churchwarden’s rate for Land in Queen Street in 1846 and the plot being shown as vacant on Monson’s map, published in 1848. George Round, banker, lived at East Hill House and belonged to a prominent Colchester family.
From 1847 to 1850 William Marwood Tucker (ob.1851), rector of All Saints’ Church, paid the rate for a “Garden”; the same rate being paid by George Round in 1851 and W A Burgess in 1852. It is unclear whether this refers to the whole site, but the 1851 Census lists “one house uninhabited” at this location.
This suggests that the present building was erected some time between 1848 and 1851, and was yet to be occupied at the date of the 1851 Census. It also suggests that, at the time of its construction, the land belonged to George Round of East Hill House.
The first known occupier of the present building is John Edwin Griffin in 1855, the same year as the retirement of his father, William Griffin, who had founded the Griffin business (later to become part of Williams & Griffin), in about 1815.
John Edwin Griffin, who described himself as “auctioneer, surveyor, land agent & valuer”, also had warehouses and stables built on the plot of land to the south from where he ran the “Colchester Horse & Carriage Repository”. He was succeeded as occupier of the house by his brother, George Lainson Griffin.
George Lainson Griffin (c.1826-1903) lived in the present building from around 1858, by which time the warehouses and stables had been taken over by Henry Hamblion, to around 1890, and it was here that his son and business successor, Henry Lainson Griffin (born c.1856) was brought up. During this period the Griffins' business was expanded with the opening of a shop in the High Street.
After having been taken over by Henry Hamblion the warehouses and stables, formerly gardens, which had until this time been united with the house to the north, were taken over by Rowland Tayler, veterinary surgeon. From 1922 part of these premises were used as a motor garage, until the development of Roman House [formerly Keddies' department store].
In the 1891 Census the building is described as a “Ladies’ Seminary” and the Kelly’s Directory for 1894 gives this address is that of the “Sisters of Mercy”.
The next occupier from 1898 to 1904 was Arthur Stannard, ironmonger and partner in the firm of Catchpool, Stannard & Stanford, who operated the High Street iron foundry. This firm, acquired by Thomas Catchpool in 1850, traded as Catchpool, Stannard & Stanford from 1872 and continued with this name even after the departure of its principal partner until it was renamed Stanford & Co. It specialised in agricultural machinery but also cast columns for the Hythe maltings, the Eagle Brewery, East Mills, etc, as well as lamp standards and drain gratings which can still be seen in the area.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the fortunes of Queen Street declined as many of its former well-to-do residents moved to new developments to the south-west of the town centre.
From 1906 to 1913 the building was run as a boarding house by John Davey and his wife before, in 1914, it became the home of Herbert Nokes Digby (born 1872), who had a tobacconist’s shop in Short Wyre Street. It was still the home of the Digby family in the 1960s.

Compiled July 2005 by Simon Taylor and reproduced here with his kind permission.