Neighbourhood Studies
Oram's Arbour and St James's Lane
6 Significant positive features of the area
Rear of St James's Lane
a Oram's Arbour provides a pleasing recreational space where people can meet.
b The layout of Clifton Road followed, in part, the course of the medieval ditch on the north side of Oram's Arbour.
c The original Victorian development was built to a higher density than, for instance, Christchurch Road, although some of the house designs are of similar character.
d More modest terraces in red brick have been stepped - in pairs, with front-facing gables on the northern arm of Clifton Road, or singly, as in Step Terrace, to take up sloping ground.
e Identical and reversed designs are usually limited to two or four repeats. The fashion for rendering of façades has led to the application of Renaissance, Classical or Gothic details, often imitating stone and painted in pastel colours or white.
f Some rendered and brick-faced houses have flint-faced backs with brick bands and trimmings, leading to picturesque effects which take away the banality of so many backs of Victorian terraces.
g The provision of three mews (Middle Road, Crowder Terrace and Mews Lane) has allowed the building of unusual staff cottages and stables, some of which have been converted to dwellings.
h A few attractive cottage groups, such as that on the south-west corner of Oram's Arbour, and also two pairs of 5-storey semi-detached houses, each pair under one large gable on the corner of Clifton Hill and Clifton Road.
Corner of Clifton Hill & Clifton Road, the 'witch's hat houses