Conway Buildings

Offices built in 1878 to the designs of Stockdale Harrison.

MATERIALS: red brick laid in English bond with stone dressings and a Welsh slate roof.

PLAN: the building is situated in a terrace facing east onto Grey Friars. It has an approximately square plan with an internal courtyard which is lined with C20 extensions.

EXTERIOR: the building is in the Gothic Revival style. The main range facing onto Grey Friars has three storeys and a part basement and is seven bays wide. It has a steeply pitched roof with corbelled out decorative stacks and pierced ridge tiles. On the ground floor the outer bays contain a plank door with decorative iron straps set in a moulded surround with a quatrefoil in the tympanum, all under a brick arch with a stone hoodmould resting on carved leaf capitals. In the centre bay the panelled double doors are under an overlight with a grille, all set in a flat, moulded stone architrave. To either side are paired timber sash windows with arched heads set in stone surrounds with a central mullion and a moulded tiled panel above. A decorative moulded brick string course with acanthus leaves and lions’ faces at each end runs just above lintel level. The first floor is lit by single lancet windows in the end bays and paired lancets in the other bays. These are set in moulded stone surrounds with transoms, capitals to the central piers and a continuous string course. The outer pairs are under moulded tile panels and the central pair is under a stone panel inscribed CONWAY BUILDINGS. The second floor has the same arrangement of single and paired windows except they are timber sashes with trefoil heads and have a continuous stone lintel/string course. The central and outer pairs are set under brick arches with tiled panels and stone hoodmoulds, all framed by gables corbelled out from the first floor. The central gable is flanked by crocketed stone pinnacles. There are stone plaques in the panels, the central one being inscribed 1878. The moulded brick cornice has acanthus decoration.

The whitewashed yard fronts in the internal courtyard retain mainly wooden mullion and transom windows and have elaborate sill bands and a dentil cornice. An ornamental wooden lucam remains where there was formerly a hoist on the west range. The other three ranges have incremental C20 extensions.

INTERIOR: this has been remodelled and retains few historic fixtures or fittings except for some original joinery and the dogleg stone staircases at either end of the building. These have an open string with shaped tread ends, and a moulded handrail supported by fine cast and wrought iron balustrades in a scrolled and acanthus leaf design. Some six-panel doors remain which have moulded rails giving the impression of Tudor square panelling. The unusual doorcases have cambered upper sections and chamfered jambs which rise into shouldered arches with roundels.