Bank Of England

The Bank of England is a bank building designed by C.R. Cockerell, constructed between 1845 and 1848. It is made of stone and features three storeys and three bays. The front has an engaged giant colonnade, tetrastyle in antis, of an unorthodox Doric order, with rusticated antae. Above, there is an attic storey with an open pediment that contains a recessed central window in a round-arched opening, flanked by Ionic columns and an entablature, topped with a lunette window. All three windows have balustrades, and the original doors are four-panelled.

On the Castle Street side, the building has three storeys with a basement and seven bays, continuing the entablature between the first and second floors, as well as a heavy bracketed cornice. The main feature of this facade is the three large round-headed recesses on the lower storeys, which contain tripartite windows surmounted by lunettes and heavily rusticated. There are iron balconies on the first-floor windows on both facades and railings on the outer bays of the colonnade. Inside, the banking hall is square with a tunnel-vaulted central aisle supported by four Doric columns, which carry an Ionic entablature. This building is noted as one of Cockerell's richest and most inventive works.