59 Portland Street

Turn right and walk to the junction of Clarence Road and Evesham Road. Here you will find a villa which is unusual in Pittville, as it features stucco in a natural colour, rather than painted white or another light colour.

The widespread use of stucco is a defining feature of Regency houses. It allowed cheaper building materials to masquerade as stone, so greatly reducing the cost of construction. Stucco is a cement-based render which was designed to look like stone, and many mixtures were patented and marketed on this basis – for example Portland Cement, designed to imitate grey Portland stone, which was patented in 1824. The fashion for painting stucco came in later and nearly every Regency property in Pittville is painted.

To complete the illusion, the stucco was marked with heavy lines to suggest blocks of masonry – as can be seen here. 59 Portland Street was completed in 1833 and incorporates subtle Neoclassical features on what is basically a Georgian facade – note the two triangular pediments.