Former town house and Parr's Bank

This substantial late Georgian building on the corner of High Street and Church Street was originally built as a town house between 1774 and 1776. It later served as Parr's Bank and has undergone alterations in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The building is constructed of brick with stone dressings and has a slate roof with wooden sash windows. The main three-storey block stands at the street corner, with a late 18th-century extension attached to the east. A further early 20th-century hipped and catslide extension projects from the south elevation, followed by a series of flat-roofed mid 20th-century extensions.

The three-storey main block and the eastern three-storey extension together form the original late 18th-century town house. The main block presents a five-bay elevation to the west, built on a stone plinth, with the three central bays projecting forward beneath a heavily moulded pediment. A cornice and blocking course run along the outer bays either side. The roof is hipped and gabled with slate covering, and features three off-set and truncated chimney stacks, two of which are joined at the east end. The central entrance, dating from the late 20th century, has flat panelled pilasters supporting an entablature and pediment. The door itself is a metal six-panelled replica 18th-century bank door inserted in 1996, with a late 20th-century three-paned overlight. Windows are arranged symmetrically around and above the central entrance. Their surrounds have gauged-brick flat arches; those on the ground floor are a mixture of original and re-inserted late 20th-century work. A continuous string band forms the projecting sill for all first-floor windows. The windows have double-hung sashes, mostly 20th-century replacements, though some late 18th-century upper and lower sashes survive on the first and second floors of both the west and north elevations.

The left return facing High Street has four bays with fenestration matching the front elevation. The right return to the south is blind, with extensions attached at ground and first-floor levels. The rear elevation facing east has two centrally aligned mid-floor arched stairwell sash windows—the lower one blocked and the upper fitted with late 19th-century sash glazing. Directly south of these is a first-floor and second-floor brick bond segmental arched window, again with the lower one blocked and the upper containing a square late 20th-century window.

Attached to the east elevation of the late 18th-century main block is the late 18th-century three-storey pitched roof extension. Its north elevation has three bays with three ground-floor windows matching the main block; the western window is inserted into a former doorway. The floors above have an off-set window, now blocked as of 2021. The side (east) and rear (south) elevations have been substantially altered. The east elevation has a wide 20th-century flat lintel two-leaf entrance door and a late 19th-century window with one-over-one sash on each floor above. The south elevation was partially rebuilt in the early 20th century and the window arrangement adapted with first and second-floor doors to provide access to a mid 20th-century metal-framed fire escape with platforms and staircases. This fire escape extends across to an early 20th-century single-storey flat-roofed brick-built east extension, which forms one room of the early 20th-century ground-floor banking strong room and has white ceramic tiles on the north elevation.

Attached to the south elevation of the late 18th-century main block is a brick-built early 20th-century extension rising from a brick plinth. Its single-bay west elevation has one ground-floor top casement wooden paned window, above which is a half-hipped roof terminating at a set-back two-storey catslide roof containing a single 20th-century four-pane wooden window. The south elevation has four bays, with three top casement wooden paned windows to the west and a brick-built projecting porch containing a late 19th-century panelled two-leaf side door. Two mid 20th-century single-storey brick-built flat-roofed extensions are attached to the east side of the early 20th-century extension, with doors into the rear yard.

Inside, the original internal arrangement of town house rooms has been altered to create a strengthened floor plan for a late 19th-century bank, with strong rooms on the ground floor and basement. The main open-plan ground-floor room, accessed directly from the central door, has four window surrounds to the west and five 20th-century windows to the north, all of which retain re-set late 19th-century window surrounds with panelling and internal hinged window shutters. Flanking either side of the central door is a floor-to-ceiling moulded window architrave with rectangular stops. The room retains deep 19th-century skirting with two different moulding profiles and a late 19th-century plastered banking ceiling ornamented with dentillated and egg-and-dart cornicing along the beams, and a simpler moulded cornice elsewhere. A stepped early 20th-century two-leaf door gives access into the ground floor of the east extension, which has matching 19th-century window surrounds and shutters.

Within the main room, a late 19th-century staircase rises through the floors, ornamented with square chamfered and finialled newel posts and decorative scroll brackets to the open-string stair. To the rear (east) of the staircase there is a short passage with an external east door leading into the rear yard and a below-stairs cupboard formerly giving access to the basement. South of the staircase, an early 20th-century concrete-built strong room three rooms deep has been built into the room's south-east corner. It has an iron two-leaf mesh door set behind a substantial Hobbs, Hart and Co Progress D security door. The south wall has a chimney breast and to the east a heavily moulded and wide late 19th-century door architrave with an early 20th-century metal door accessing the early 20th-century south extension. This extension comprises an L-shaped corridor with a west and south room, the latter now a kitchen. The south end of the corridor terminates with a re-set late 19th-century door architrave and a substantial late 19th-century panelled mock two-leaf bank door. To the right is an internal access door to a subsidiary and heavily altered brick-built basement which formed part of a pre-existing terrace building to the south. It has early 20th-century concrete steps with a corrugated roof leading down to an 18th-century brick-built basement with 19th and 20th-century alterations. The east elevation of the early 20th-century extension gives access to two single-storey flat-roofed 1950s extensions, which contain two ground-floor rooms to the east and to the south a short north-south aligned corridor leading to a WC block.

The first floor is accessed from the main staircase, which has a dogleg-with-half-landing and a blind arched window. The landing provides access north and south to a series of interconnected rooms comprising four rooms in the main block and a single room in the late 18th-century east extension. Late 18th-century square stopped window surrounds with panelling and shutters remain in place across the north and west elevations, and sections of 19th-century cornicing and remnants of historic wallpaper are in situ, now concealed beneath suspended ceilings. A late 19th-century door surround leads to the south-west room, with a matching late 19th-century surround in the south-east room providing access to a cupboard. The cupboard extends into the upper floor of the early 20th-century south extension and partially retains a late 19th-century staircase which provided access between the upper floors and the former south terrace house. The north-east room, now subdivided, is accessed through a late 18th-century shouldered and bolection moulded door architrave with a 20th-century metal door. Two east 20th-century doorways give access to the extension's first floor, which retains a late 19th-century cross-beam plaster ceiling.

The first to second-floor staircase has a dogleg-with-quarter winder stair with an arched staircase window retaining a moulded architrave supported on brackets. The second floor has a similar arrangement of rooms and retains late 18th-century door surrounds and panelled doors to the north-west and north-east rooms, with late 18th-century square stopped and simply moulded window surrounds to the north and west elevations. Twentieth-century doorways have been punctured between rooms on both floors.

The basement is now accessed through a ground-floor trap door and contains four rooms, all with late 19th-century brick buttresses abutting pre-existing walls to support a late 19th-century concrete plank, metal frame and iron girder banking floor. The rooms are formed from sandstone wall footings of earlier buildings, most likely those of the former Cockpitt House and New House, with sandstone quoins marking former external walls and openings. Inverted and infilled late 18th-century brick arches cut through the earlier stone masonry to support and strengthen the late 18th-century elevations above. The north-west room has a stone-flagged floor, whilst the south-west room has an irregular arrangement of red brick flooring with an 18th-century brick chimney breast against the south wall, infilled with late 19th-century brickwork and a cast-iron clean-out door. An east doorway in the south-west room gives access to a now blocked late 18th-century stone basement staircase with a 19th-century wooden stair-frame set over it. Directly south of the stair is a late 19th-century brick-built south-east strong room accessed by a substantial raised and fielded metal safe door. The north-east room has a 20th-century access chute in the north wall, concealed externally.