Summary
Mid-C19 town house.
Reasons for Designation
Holm View, 63 High Street, a mid-C19 town house, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* it is a good example of a mid-C19 town house, well-proportioned and characterised by fine architectural detailing in the classical style;
* those parts of the interior that were available for inspection retain good quality fixtures and fittings, notably the tessellated floors, ornate plasterwork and elegant staircase.
Group value:
* it contributes to the architectural quality of the High Street and has group value with a considerable number of listed buildings, particularly nos 59, 62 and 134-5 which have varying origins as houses and shops from the C18 and C19.
History
The name Lowestoft is Scandinavian in origin and may be translated as Hloover’s toft – the homestead of Hloover. The town relocated to the cliff-top from an earlier site, about a mile to the south-west, during the period 1300-1350, partly because of increasing maritime activity (especially herring-fishing) and the need it created to be closer to the sea, and partly because of the difficulty of accommodating an expanding population in-situ without building houses on valuable agricultural land. The area chosen for the new site was low-grade coastal heath, used mainly for the rough-grazing of livestock which became a more useful asset to the manorial lord as building-land. The main street is of sinuous alignment, following the natural curves of the cliff. The better-off members of the community lived along the High Street whilst the less affluent largely resided in a gridiron side-street area to the west. Lowestoft was thus a planned late medieval town.
The High Street was lined with burgage plots containing prosperous merchants’ houses for much of the medieval and early modern period, and the cliff-face was made usable by terracing. The cliff-top itself provided an area behind the houses for the storage of household goods and materials; and the first step down was multi-purpose, sometimes planted with fruit trees and used as an amenity area, but also functioning as a place for putting all kinds of household waste. The second and third stages down were mainly taken up with the buildings that serviced fishing and other maritime enterprise: curing-houses, net-stores, stables and the like. Access from the cliff-top to the sea was provided by footways known as scores (three of them widened for use by carts) – a word deriving from the Old Norse ‘skora’, meaning ‘to cut’ or ‘to incise’. These had originally started life as surface-water gullies down the soft face of the cliff – a natural process that lent itself to use as tracks.
The chief trade of Lowestoft and the source of its prosperity remained herring fishing until the C19. Then in 1827 the harbour was created, and in 1832 the navigation continued through to Oulton Broad, giving access to the River Waveney and Norwich. Samuel Morton Peto was brought in to construct the outer harbour, and he ensured the arrival of the railway in 1847 as well as developing the land south of the harbour as a seaside resort. The town was bombarded by the Germans in 1916 and suffered considerable damage from 178 enemy raids in the Second World War. Post-war reconstruction involved new roads being cut through the northern part of the town. In the later years of the C20 the fishing industry has almost completely declined.
Holm View, 63 High Street, was built in the mid-C19. It was the home of William Youngman, a brewer and JP as well as the first mayor of Lowestoft in 1885-1886 and again from 1901-1902. The house appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey (OS) map of 1886 facing west onto the High Street with two narrow ranges to the rear, most likely service areas, with attached glasshouses. The detached building shown to the south of the southern rear range was built as a stables and billiards room for William Youngman. This has since been heavily altered and is now in use as a scout den (2020). The southern rear range of the house shown on the 1886 map has been removed, as have the glasshouses. When Holm View was first listed in 1977 it was described as offices but it has since been converted into six flats.
Details
Mid-C19 town house.
MATERIALS: red brick laid in Flemish bond with stucco dressings and a slate roof covering.
PLAN: the building faces west onto the High Street and has a rectangular front range with a short rear cross-wing to the south and a long narrow single-storey range to the north.
To the south-east of the house, the detached two-storey former stable block and billiards room is excluded from the listing, having been extensively altered.
EXTERIOR: Holm View is in a Georgian classical style with rendered rusticated quoins and a dentilled modillion eaves cornice. It has two storeys and an attic in four bays under a pitched roof with gable-end chimney stacks with moulded and dentilled oversailing stone cornices. The attic is lit by two dormers with glazed sides under open pediments supported by consoles. A four-panelled, double-leaf door is set to the right of the elevation within a semicircular arch opening, the edge enriched with egg-and-dart. The original door furniture survives, including the decorative brass ring handles and letterboxes and the cast iron doorbell plate. The door is set within a handsome doorcase with unfluted Corinthian columns on high plinths supporting a dentilled pediment. To the left are three two-over-two pane horned sashes, all within rendered surrounds with hoods on consoles. There are four similar sash windows above.
The rear three-storey cross-wing is lit by a two-storey canted bay window with two-over-two pane sashes with dentilled cornices. A semicircular arch doorway to the right has double-leaf panelled doors with glazed upper panels. To the right again, the rear elevation of the main range is lit on the ground and first floors by sash windows with margin lights, and there are two smaller sashes above. The projecting single-storey range, seen on the 1886 OS map, is rendered and has new windows and a door.
INTERIOR: only the hall, staircase and one other room were available for inspection. The entrance hall has a cast iron Art Nouveau fireplace and an elaborate modillion cornice enriched with waterleaf and bead-and-reel mouldings. A panelled archway with a plasterwork swag leads to the elegant dogleg staircase. This has a panelled spandrel, an open string with carved tread ends, and two stick balusters per tread supporting a scrolled handrail. The hall and first-floor landing have elaborate tessellated floors in blues and browns, edged in guilloche and a wide band of scrolled foliage. On the landing is a wide fitted sideboard with panelled doors and consoles. On the ground floor, the rear (east) room has a moulded cornice and wide frieze with a delicate foliate design. It also retains a round ceiling rose with acanthus leaf decoration and panelled window shutters.
