Details
BRISTOL
ST5873SE BROAD STREET, Centre
901-1/11/522 (South West side)
08/01/59 Nos.13 AND 14
Former Bank of England
(Formerly Listed as:
BROAD STREET
(South side)
Nos.12 AND 14
Old Bank of England)
GV I
Bank, now offices. 1844-47. By CR Cockerell. Limestone ashlar,
roof not visible. Greek Revival style.
L-shaped with a central banking hall, right-hand rear block
with a stair well between. 3 storeys; 1:3-window range. A
compressed, symmetrical front with a left-hand 1-window
section of different design. The main part set back between
narrow end buttresses up to attic impost band, with outer
porches in the re-entrant linked by a low wall and railings;
giant distyle-in-antis Greek Doric attached columns to an
entablature with triglyphs that ends in triglyph consoles on
the buttresses, beneath a deep cornice. Outer sections are
banded.
Tall pedimented attic set back between the buttresses, banded
up to the impost band of pilasters to semicircular-arched
recesses with hoodmoulds, containing similar arches with
French windows. The porches are banded to the upper half, with
battered, eared architraves to double 6-panel doors, with
small roundels. Tall ground-floor cross windows with recessed
roll mouldings to cills, mullions and transoms, a band above
between the columns with Greek key, and narrow second-floor
windows with moulded cills and sliding 2/2-pane sashes.
The left-hand section is symmetrical with fluted Corinthian
attached columns to an entablature, broken forward with
rosettes above the columns, a central panelled shaft, blocked
with an inserted window to the right, and open to a through
passage to Albion Chambers (qv) to the left. Full-width
tripartite windows above have guilloche strips between
archtraves, acanthus sill blocks, and consoles to first-floor
cornice and second-floor pediment, with Vitruvian scroll to
the lintels and anthemia below the second-floor cill. The
left-hand rear return has a bowed stair section facing onto
Albion Chambers, and a right-hand return stained glass stair
light.
INTERIOR: central banking hall much altered with an inserted
ceiling, with a right-hand hall entered from the porch
extending into the left-hand section, with crested mid
cornice, coved ceiling with shallow arched coffering with star
pattern, and cast-iron colonnettes with foliate capitals above
the alleyway up to the ceiling; rear block has a linking stair
well, bowed to the left, cantilevered stone open dogleg winder
stair, ornate paired cast-iron balusters; plain fire surrounds
with cast-iron doors, panelled shutters and 4-panel doors.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: attached cast-iron spike-headed railings
between the porchs, and to the cornice in front of the attic
with palmettes, and double cast-iron scrolls over the
doorways.
Cockerell designed the Bristol branch of the Bank of England
between those for Manchester and Liverpool, and all derived
from his Westminster Life Office in the Strand. Graeco-Roman
design of great power and gravity making use of the
intercolumniation of the portico for wide windows to light the
banking hall, the third storey being squeezed in between the
peidiment and cornices. The contrasting side section
presumably narrows the design and keeps the width in
proportion to the height. Formerly with railings matching the
front to the ground-floor windows.
(The Builder: London: 488 & 549; Crick C: Victorian Buildings
in Bristol: Bristol: 1975-: 2; The Buildings of England:
Pevsner N: North Somerset and Bristol: London: 1958-: 426;
Gomme A, Jenner M and Little B: Bristol, An Architectural
History: Bristol: 1979-).
Listing NGR: ST5882473086
