Gladstone terrace

Gladstone terrace

Named for the Prime Minister

 

Gladstone Terrace is a small terrace of five houses, built as speculative housing on a greenfield site in 1886 by Samuel Cridland, a local builder and mason. It lies on the eastern side of Brickyard Lane (today's St Michael's Avenue) to the immediate north of the White Horse pub and New Prospect Place.

The terrace features decorative cream brickwork string courses that contrast well with the local red Yeovil bricks - almost certainly made at the brickworks further up the lane.

It was named in honour of William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), Liberal Prime Minister 1868-74, 1880-85, 1886 and 1892-94.

Gladstone is famous for his oratory, his religiosity, his liberalism, for his poor relations with Queen Victoria (who once complained, "He always addresses me as if I were a public meeting") and for his rivalry with the Conservative Leader Benjamin Disraeli, created Earl of Beaconsfield and celebrated in Beaconsfield Terrace on the opposite side of Brickyard Lane.

 

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Gladstone Terrace in St Michael's Avenue, built by Samuel Cridland in 1886. Such a shame that people find it necessary to paint over stone and brickwork to ruin an otherwise pleasing street scene elevation. Photographed in 2014.

 

The datestone - Gladstone Terrace over SC 1886. Photographed in 2014.