Old Bank Chambers

Old Bank Chambers is a bank building, now serving as a council housing office, located in Bishop Auckland. It was constructed around 1860, possibly for the National Provincial Bank, and is designed in the Gothic Revival style. The building has an L-shaped plan and is made of snecked stone with an ashlar plinth and dressings, topped with a Welsh slate roof.

The structure is two storeys high and features two windows along with a corner turret. On the left side, there is a gabled porch that has a raised segmental arch above a panelled door, which is accompanied by a blocked overlight and a quatrefoil window above it. The bargeboards are adorned with pierced trefoils and are supported by paired brackets.

To the right, a wide relieving arch sits over a triple plain sash stone mullion window, which has raised roll-moulded heads on nookshafts with stiff leaf capitals. The first-floor sill string wraps around the round turret, which projects forward on the left and includes a two-light window with a flat stone lintel and alternate block jambs, topped with a high conical roof.

The building also features two through-eaves dormers above paired cusped lights with plain sashes, sloping sills, chamfered mullions, and blind quatrefoils in the soffits. The arched bargeboards are supported by paired shaped brackets and have top pierced quatrefoils. The steeply pitched roof has a chimney at the right end with a sloping plinth and top cornice, while the left return blind turret includes one dormer.

Low chamfered walls connect the porch to the turret on the left, and the adjoining house on the right has twisted cast-iron railings with cross finials on the principals and fleur-de-lys heads on the dogbars, framing pierced cast-iron panels. The interior features Gothic doors, a stucco cornice, and 20th-century partitions.