Number 8 And Grays Dispensary

Number 8 and Gray's Dispensary, formerly known as The York Dispensary, is a medical dispensary and office building constructed between 1897 and 1899. It was designed by Edmund Kirby of Liverpool for Messrs Gray, Dodsworth and Cobb, Solicitors.

The building is constructed in red brick laid in English garden-wall bond with moulded brick dressings. Window mullions and transoms are of stone. The roofs are plain tile with turreted and gabled forms, brick stacks, and terracotta and wrought-iron finials topped with a snake weathervane. The architectural style is Jacobethan Revival.

The exterior comprises two storeys with a basement and attics, presenting a 13-window front elevated on a high plinth. The plinth contains blocked segment-headed openings. The projecting central bay features half-panelled double doors with original furniture, surmounted by four tiers of glazed arcaded lights set within a four-centred multi-order arch of moulded brick. The spandrels are carved with stylised flowers and foliage, and carry dates of 1788 and 1899 to the left and right respectively. Above the doorway is a band of blind arcaded tracery and a stone panel carved in relief displaying the City arms and a scroll inscribed "YORK DISPENSARY". The upper storeys contain a two-storey canted bay window with half-hexagonal pointed roof.

The left end bay is set back and designed as a square turret with pyramidal roof. A carriageway with shallow two-centred arch is closed by wrought-iron double gates beneath a stone panel carved with "PATIENTS ENTRANCE" in low relief. The upper floors feature three-light windows with transoms. Projecting gabled bays flank the central doorway, articulated by half-hexagonal shafts rising the full height to coped gables with kneelers surmounted by finials. The first floor displays three-light windows, three to the left and two to the right. The attics contain segment-headed lights arranged in three tiers to the left and two tiers to the right.

At the right end, tripled bays contain a multi-order doorway with double pegged-on panelled doors retaining original furniture, and an arcaded overlight with leaded lights. A three-light window with transoms sits above, set behind an arcaded parapet of traceried round arches of moulded brick. The gabled bay to the left has two two-light windows on the ground and first floors with transoms, and a five-light attic window. The turreted bay to the right contains narrow transomed windows on all floors, with square heads in segmental arches on ground and attic floors and flat lintels on the first floor. Between the projecting bays are two-light windows with transoms on ground and first floors, and dormers with square lattice sashes to the attic. Above the first floor windows runs a full-width blind traceried frieze of moulded brick, continued across the right return. Roll-moulded brick sill strings and string courses are similarly returned.

The right return presents a three-storey, three-bay gabled front. Basement openings are glazed. Ground floor windows comprise three stepped lights with transoms, recessed in semicircular arches of moulded brick. Polygonal shafts corbelled out between windows rise to four-centred arches beneath crow-stepped gables. On the first floor, a four-light oriel window is flanked by three-light windows, all with transoms. The second floor contains a three-tier window of segment-headed lights. The brick coped gable end has brick kneelers incorporating rainwater gutter spouts.

The interior retains a former dispensary staircase rising to the attics, featuring a moulded close string, sturdy turned balusters, chamfered newels with finials and pendants, and a moulded handrail. A framed newel staircase with moulded close string, twisted balusters and moulded handrail rises through the offices from ground floor to attics. Panelled doors in fluted and fasciated architraves survive throughout the building, and moulded cornices have been retained despite later subdivisions.