St Hughes Chambers

St Hughes Chambers, Lincoln

Offices or lawyers' chambers, built in 1899. Believed to be designed by WE Mortimer & Son for solicitors A Trotter and A Brook. The building is constructed of red brick with a Welsh slate roof, featuring half-timbered gabled bays, pargeting, and ornamental stonework.

The front elevation comprises three storeys and three bays with end stacks, plus a single-bay wing set back from the street frontage to the left and standing two-and-a-half storeys. The street frontage is symmetrical around a central entrance formed by a stone doorcase with flanking pilasters supporting an ornamented stone pediment. The pediment bears a central shield embossed with "St Hughes Chambers 1899" and is flanked by pedestals bearing rampant lions. Similar pilasters topped by rampant lions on pedestals stand at either end of the elevation. The ground floor shop windows flanking the entrance are twentieth-century insertions. Above the entrance at first floor level, a projecting Gothic-style statue plinth is topped by a projecting domed stone canopy. On either side are bay windows featuring cross-mullioned windows with leaded upper lights and plate glass lower lights. The narrow side lights to these bays have glass that curves through ninety degrees, again with plate glass lower lights and leaded upper lights. The bays continue to the second floor, where the windows are leaded without transoms but retain curved glass side lights. At the centre of the second floor sits an oculus window with a metal glazing bar grid, framed by a pair of back-to-back griffins formed in relief by pargeting. The two bay windows are similarly framed by back-to-back griffins. At the time of survey, the griffins were rendered in white against a pale blue background. The gables above the bay windows are half-timbered with render infill panels and feature ornamented carved bargeboards in arabesque style.

The elevation to the left is obscured at ground floor level by a separate single-storey shop. The first floor contains two round-headed windows with plate glass lower lights and Georgian bar upper lights. The second floor has a second oculus window framed by griffins, continuing the frieze from the front elevation. This frieze extends back to the line of the chimney stack, which breaks slightly forward from the face of the gable. An arabesque pargeted design accentuates the sweep of the chimney stack, which breaks the roof line just to the rear of the ridge. Within the line of the chimney stack at second floor level is a further window: a twelve-over-twelve Georgian-style sash with a timber cornice and extended cill supported by timber consoles.

The wing to the rear is similarly obscured at ground floor level by a single-storey shop. The first floor has a shallow brick arch over a pair of windows with plate glass lower lights and divided upper lights. The second floor features a half-timbered half-dormer with a pair of Georgian-style sashes. The gable wall has two round-headed windows matching those on the first floor of the main building.

The interior was not inspected, but is believed to retain details of interest. The entrance lobby features a geometric tiled floor.

Corporation Street was a new road opened in the late nineteenth century to link High Street and Hungate. It does not appear on the 1889 map at 1:2500 scale but is shown on the 1907 edition. The 1901 Ruddock's Directory for the City of Lincoln lists two solicitors at St Hughes Chambers, Corporation Street, both of whom appear again in the 1906 Kelly's Directory, by which time one had become the City Coroner.

St Hughes Chambers is of special architectural interest as a well-preserved and carefully detailed late Victorian commercial building in which qualities of respectability and dependability are conveyed through architectural display. Features such as the pargeted griffins and decorative bargeboards demonstrate wealth; initially less noticeable details such as the curved glass forming the sidelights to the bay windows are also worthy of note. The overall quality of external detailing is sufficiently high in a national context to justify its listing.