The City and the Pillars
What does Pevsner have to say? “The most spectacular piece of Regency development in Southampton… The Crescent starts at London Road and curves northwest, composed in the main of broad three bay three storey stuccoed detached houses linked together by screen walls, mostly sufficiently close to each other for the street, except in a few places, to appear as a piece of unified townscape. The houses vary in detail but are mostly the same in general composition, typical of Southampton with their elements of classical decoration almost without refinements…”
A little piece of Brighton gone west; a miniature Regent’s Park flown south. On the cusp of the maritime city’s decline as a spa resort and its rise as a merchant port, riding the crest of this wave, businessman Edward Toomer (1764 to 1852) fortuitously bought land to the southwest of the verdant pearl that is Asylum Green. Even more fortuitously, his son Samuel (1801 to 1842) was an architect. This provincial John Nash was responsible for designing many of the houses on and around Carlton Crescent.
The area has a unified appearance, thanks in no small part to being wilfully stuccoed to the nines (except for tile hung flank walls and returns), but was actually developed over two decades beginning in 1825. It is first mentioned in that same year in the Hampshire Chronicle, “Carlton Crescent has this season made its appearance and contains eight handsomely built residences; being detached, these will, when finished, form by far the handsomest line of houses in Southampton.” They still do.
