Sun Alliance Buildings

The Sun Alliance Buildings, located at 17 to 21 Horsefair Street, were built in 1891 by Goddard and Paget and are designed in a modified 16th-century Flemish style. The structure is made of red brick and features extensive cut and moulded detailing. It stands three storeys tall with attics, showcasing an ashlar ground floor topped by a bracketed dentilled cornice. The building has large stone mullion and transom windows, arranged in two, three, and five-light configurations, with small Ionic and Corinthian pilastered mullions. The central round-arch doorway is adorned with carved spandrels and fluted Corinthian half-columns on pedestals, while an elliptical arch doorway with an entablature is located to the left.

Above the five windows, which slightly project, are moulded mullion and transom windows in four and two-light arrangements, flanked by brick pilasters with carved capitals. Small semi-circular shell niches are found in the frieze of the entablature above the first-floor windows. The second-floor windows are complemented by relief decorations in the deep frieze and dentilled cornice. The attic features windows set within five gables, each with stone coping and finials. The end gables, which project, include small flanking turret shafts and semi-circular shell niches above the attic windows.

The Sun Alliance Buildings are part of a group that includes Nos 6-8 The Royal Hotel, Nos 17, 19, and 21, along with The Town Hall, Fountain, and War Memorial in Town Hall Square, and all listed buildings in Bishop Street.