Hutchinson's Buildings

Hutchinson's Buildings

Former shops and offices on High Street West, rebuilt in 1898-1899 following destruction by fire. The building was designed by Henry Miller Potts of Joseph Potts & Son.

The structure is a steel frame clad in sandstone ashlar, with possible reuse of some materials from the 1850 building it replaced. The roof is Welsh slate, and the rear elevation is red brick.

The building has a rectangular plan and presents a symmetrical elevation to the High Street. The design comprises a three-storey central section with three bays containing three sets of paired windows, flanked by four-storey end pavilions of two bays each with two sets of paired windows. The building references rather than replicates the 1850s building it superseded.

The central entrance features a reeded surround within a doorcase of Tuscan fluted columns on high panelled plinths, with an entablature and a segment-headed corniced pediment bearing low relief foliate sculpture. The frieze below carries the inscription 'HUTCHINSON'S BUILDINGS'. Above the panelled two-leaf door, a panel reads 'Chambers'. The ground-floor shop fronts are twentieth-century replacements. The first and second floors have high panelled plinths to giant Tuscan pilasters, fluted and reeded on the first floor, which define each pair of bays through slightly projecting central and end sections. Both floors have moulded sills to horned sash window frames in plain reveals. The second-floor entablature breaks forward over the end projections and carries a pierced balustrade over a central pediment. The end pavilions feature a corniced attic storey with pilasters and paired windows; acroteria on the cornice appear to have been reused from the previous building. Corniced balustrades link the centre and end blocks. Most windows are late nineteenth-century horned sashes, except those to number 103, which retained its original 1850s exterior with original sash windows. The rear elevation of red brick has concrete lintels over numerous window and door openings. A triple-height canted bay stair window lighting the main rear staircase has largely blocked openings except on the second floor, which retains original fenestration.

Internally, some cellar stone walls from the original 1850s building survive with brick rebuilding beneath the late nineteenth-century rebuilt ground and upper floors. The late nineteenth-century plans of the ground and first floors have been lost through conversion to a later twentieth-century nightclub, though the late nineteenth-century hallway from the central entrance and a grand staircase remain as principal historic features. The hallway has a geometric encaustic tiled floor and a compartmented ceiling. Walls are clad in Minton, Hollins and Company low-relief tiles featuring yellow panels with sunflowers below the dado and cream and brown panels with green birds in a pear tree above. The grand staircase is ornate and neo-Jacobean in character, with original treads, chunky newels and fluted balusters. The original cornice and tongue and groove ceiling survives beneath a suspended ground-floor ceiling.

The second floor, housing the original chambers, retains its original plan but with inserted partitions. A communal reception room features plaster segmental arches with fluted keystones supported by fluted consoles providing access to various areas; one pair of arches has a plaster niche set between them. Several large second-floor rooms, subdivided by twentieth-century stud walls, retain chimneybreasts and hearths, though fireplaces have been removed. Two small third floors each have their own staircase from the second floor. The more easterly forms a single room retaining a fireplace with an elaborate wooden surround and cast-iron grate, along with original cornice and skirting; a glazed southern roof section indicates this was a photographic studio. The more westerly attic has a short flight of timber stairs, a number of four-panel doors, skirting boards and an exposed hearth.