Barclays Bank

SUNDERLAND

NZ3957SE FAWCETT STREET 920-1/18/72 (West side) 10/11/78 No.53 Barclays Bank

GV II

Bank. 1875. By Austin and Johnson for Wood's Bank. Now Barclays Bank. Baroque palazzo style. Ashlar with cast-iron balconies; slate roof. 3 storeys and attics, 5x3 windows. Renewed doors and semi-circular overlights in end bays of rusticated ground floor with architraves on impost strings of keyed round-headed openings; renewed round-headed windows in other bays with recessed panelled aprons. Giant Corinthian order above, square pilasters at corners and attached round columns to intermediate bays, linked by elaborate first-floor cast-iron balconies. Lugged keyed architraves to first-floor sashes with glazing bars, keys rising to floor string between pilasters, and to elliptical-headed second-floor sashes on moulded sills and aprons. Big top entablature with pulvinated frieze and modillioned cornice. Hipped roof has side consoles to oeils de boeuf dormers in central and end bays and taller segment headed dormers between. Right return has 3 bays in similar style without doors and with 3 segment headed dormers, and 4 set-back bays with rusticated ground floor having doors in outer bays and triple-keyed ground floor tripartite windows; plainer treatment to upper floors with cornices, pediments and keyed architraves to various windows. An important corner building, and designed for Woods Bank as the key to a larger scheme, including the Subscription Library at No.52 (qv), which was intended to fill a complete block. (Corfe T: The Buildings of Sunderland 1814-1914.: Newcastle upon Tyne: 1983-: 21; Milburn GE and Miller ST: Sunderland River, Town and People: Sunderland: 1988-: 160).

Listing NGR: NZ3972657012