Storey Institute

An art institute built in 1887 and extended in 1906, designed by Paley and Austin. Located on a corner site on Meeting House Lane in Lancaster.

The building is constructed of sandstone ashlar with ashlar dressings, slate roofs with curved gables, and tall chimneys. The extension uses white glazed brick for its rear walls. The style is Jacobean Revival, distinguished by a domed octagonal turret positioned at the junction of the two main facades.

The structure comprises two storeys with an attic and cellars. Both facades feature string courses and glazing bar sash windows. On the ground floor, the windows have roll-moulded surrounds; on the first floor they are framed by architraves with moulded sills and strapwork ornament above moulded pediments.

The Meeting House Lane facade contains three principal bays with paired windows on the ground and first floors. The attic windows rise into dormers with scrolled shaped pediments. Narrower bays between them have timber attic dormers set behind the parapet and projecting from the mansard roof slope. The right-hand bay contains the entrance doorway, which has a bolection-moulded architrave with an outer moulding enriched by shaft rings and a segmental pediment. Engaged Tuscan columns with strapwork decoration above their bases flank the doorway, supporting an entablature whose cornice continues the string course. The first floor displays two rows of windows lighting the stairs.

Towards the left of the Meeting House Lane facade, the Art Gallery projects slightly under an elaborate shaped gable with cornices, finials, and four pilasters rising from first-floor level. The ground floor contains four windows and a door. The wall above is blank except for a central oculus in the gable and a first-floor plaque inscribed "IN HONOREM VICTORIAE REGINAE NOSTRAE... MDCCCLXXXVII". To the left is a lower studio of one storey plus attic with two ground-floor windows and an upper window rising into a gable dormer. At the far left, a single-storey curved wall contains a round-arched gateway. The corner turret has a lead dome with a spirelet.

The Castle Hill facade is of four bays, treated similarly to the Meeting House Lane front, except that the third bay has four windows on both ground and first floors and paired attic dormers. The 1906 addition cants back at an angle to the right, comprising three storeys with two bays projecting slightly forward under a shaped gable with an oculus and paired windows. Two main bays in the centre have paired windows with narrower bays to left and right. A long timber attic dormer is set back behind a parapet.

The first-floor rear corridor is lit by a curved stained-glass window designed by Mr Jowett of Shrigley and Hunt. It contains medallion figures symbolical of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Music, Literature and Science, along with the names of men distinguished in the Arts. The first-floor exhibition hall is top-lit by a lantern spanned by four trusses. In a semicircular alcove at the rear stands a marble statue of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort, sculptured by Mr Wood of Chelsea.