Yorkshire Bank

Yorkshire Bank occupies a prominent corner site at the junction of Manor Row and North Parade. Built in 1895 as the Yorkshire Penny Bank, designed by L Ledingham, it is constructed of sandstone ashlar with a rich and elaborate facade combining Franco-Flemish and Italian Renaissance details, characterized by a high quality of carving and stonemasonry. The building is three storeys high with an attic. It features a bowed corner of three bays and four-bay side elevations. The design incorporates a deep, stepped and moulded plinth, entablatures to each floor, and an ornate frieze to the main bracket cornice, decorated with strapwork and festoon motifs. The corner composition presents an open arcade with an oval vestibule. The oval piers have foliate caps and twisted fluting to their necks, with applied colonettes that continue as pilasters dividing the carved strapwork and rinceaux spandrels. The arches feature spaced voussoirs and console keystones. The first floor is articulated by pilaster stops, with two-light windows featuring corkscrew fluted shaft colonettes as mullions. The second floor mirrors the ground floor with an open arcade and balcony. Above the balustraded parapet is a dormer with shell carving to the tympanum and a stepped, broken pediment. Flanking the dormer is a truncated octagonal slate spire supporting an octagonal, battered clock turret. The turret faces are articulated by projecting columns, a festooned frieze, a concave swept cornice, and a shallow ogee lead dome surmounted by a short staff wing supporting a weathervane. Further elements include canted bartizan turrets corbelled out from the ground-floor entablature, with narrow pedimented windows, blind arcading, and low stone domes topped with ball finials. The side elevations feature two-light windows similar to those on the corner’s first floor, with plain mullions to the second floor. A banking hall with arcaded ground-floor windows, akin to the porch in detail, is housed within. The banking hall is characterized by a richly decorated plaster ceiling with rinceaux and strapwork, a marble faced dado, and mahogany furnishings.