Arcade Royale Post Office Chambers And Arcade Royale West Entrance

Shops and offices incorporating the west entrance of Arcade Royale, dating to circa 1900, with an arcade entrance inserted around 1912, likely by Clement Williams. The building is constructed of ashlar, with a roof of grey-green slates and a lead-covered angle turret, and is in a Free Baroque style.

The exterior has three storeys, arranged in a 1:2:2:2:1 by 2:1:2:1 bay layout, plus a canted corner feature. The Commercial Street front features renewed plate glass shop windows and a central arcade entrance. Above the recessed, panelled door to the Post Office Chambers on the left and the arched entrance in the centre is a full-width entablature with curved projections flanking the windows. The upper floors have full-height pilasters defining the bays, with rustication to those flanking the left office entrance bay and the two bays over the arcade entrance. Most windows are mullion and transom. The first bay includes a rounded oriel on the second floor, situated under an arch springing from pilasters and supporting a ramped roof balustrade of a small tower. Central bays have canted bay windows on the first floor, and recessed, segmental headed second floor windows with multiple keys, the central keys rising to the top cornice. Flanking intermediate bays are recessed with a linking second floor entablature, and richly carved panels over the top windows. Eaves dentils are situated between the pilasters, which in turn support the cornice on long, curved brackets rising from the pilasters. A central attic storey features short Tuscan columns framing three narrow lights, flanked by oeil de boeuf windows, all between rusticated pilasters and a rich carving of the central segmental pediment. The right-hand canted bay has corbelled octagonal buttresses flanking a full-height oriel above the shops, and a carved panel below the ramped eaves parapet; an octagonal roof turret has rusticated pilasters and round-headed windows.

The right return to King Edward Street mirrors the fenestration with two-storey, three-light bowed windows to the central bay. The steeply pitched mansard roof has high pyramidal towers over the left and central bays, and high relief swags to the high, domed turret. Set-back dormer windows between the turrets feature high pediments. All towers are topped with tall spike and ball finials. Tall block chimney stacks with side pilasters rise from the upper slope of the roof. The interior was not inspected.

The building forms part of a significant group of buildings in the centre of Halifax, close to the Town Hall, Borough Market and Lloyds Bank.