Exchange Buildings

Exchange Buildings comprises shops, offices, and a bank, dating to around 1840 and designed by Richard Grainger. It forms the east front of a triangular block situated between Market Street, Grainger Street, and Grey Street, incorporating the Central Arcade. The building’s construction used sandstone ashlar, with a Welsh slate roof and lead-covered corner domes.

The building is four storeys high, with rounded five-bay corners and a 7:6:7 bay arrangement. A central arcade entrance features a high, rounded hood supported by modillions, inserted in 1901. The left bay of the central pavilion contains a high office entrance, with steps leading to a renewed, panelled door set within a bracketed hood. Flower-carved brackets and a dentilled cornice are present. The ground floor includes shops dating from around 1900, with slender pilasters, and a panelled double office door at the right end before a curved corner.

The upper floors feature a giant Corinthian order to the curved corners. Sashes on the second floor have moulded sills, and pilasters flank the top sashes under a dentilled cornice. Vertical consoles above the pilasters support a drum with a scroll-carved blocking course and antefixae on the cornice, surmounted by a high ribbed dome with a copper Prince of Wales feathers finial.

The central pavilion displays giant square Tuscan pilasters; the windows in the central four bays have plain reveals, while those in the outer bays have architraves, with bracketed cornices on the first floor. A dentilled cornice runs along the second-floor entablature. Pilasters and sashes are present on the top floor, beneath a top cornice. A pierced balustrade is positioned above the end bays. The plainer intermediate sections have sashes with moulded sills on the second floor, and a continuous top entablature with a blocking course. The building's other facades echo this style.