Newport: 38 and 40 Fields Park Road

 

38 and 40 Fields Park Road are a semi-detached pair, built sometime in the early 1890's for £1600 for both of them. They were named "Glanmor" and "Rostrevor" respectively. They are built in the Queen Anne Revival style out of red brick derived locally from St Julians brickworks across the other side of Newport, slate roofs and limestone window and door surrounds. The front of the houses face South, a desirable orientation before refrigeration, as it meant that the kitchen and scullery faced North, keeping food and food preparation areas as cool as possible.

The walls are built using a hybrid construction approach of solid nine inch thick walls on the outside with a cavity and then a standard 4.5 inch brick wall for the inner skin. The standard approach until the 20th century was to have a single solid 9 inch brick wall, whereas in the 20th century the standard construction was two 4.5 inch brick walls with a cavity between. These houses combine both methods.

The entrance doors are at the side of the house, between the front and rear reception rooms. Each house has four reception rooms with what is now the kitchen tacked on to the rear making a fifth major room on the ground floor. Below the ground floor are cellars, with each covering the area of two ground floor rooms, and comprising a room for storing coal and a larger room. The houses originally had a scullery at the rear of the house (for food preparation and washing up) and a kitchen (for cooking and further food preparation) in one of the two middle rooms. Between the kitchen and the front of the house was a "butler's pantry". In number 38 this room is still there and still has the floor level  cupboards originally fitted into the room. There were also shelves above these cupboards, which have now gone.

The first floors of the houses comprised four bedrooms and one or two bathrooms and separate toilet above the original scullery, while the second floor has three rooms. It appears that these rooms were designed for servants as the standard of joinery is lower than in the other rooms.

In all, the houses are around 3,900 square feet each.

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