Midland Bank

The Midland Bank, built in 1883, is a bank located on Chapel Street in Stratford-upon-Avon. Designed by the architectural firm Harris, Martin and Harris of Birmingham for the Birmingham Banking Company, the building is constructed of brick with ashlar and terracotta dressings, topped with a tile roof featuring enriched cresting and truncated brick stacks. It is designed in the Gothic style and stands three storeys tall.

The façade features a two-window range with a canted angle to the right and a two-storey, three-window range to the left. There are shallow offset buttresses and a top Lombard frieze. The ground floor has paired pointed-arched windows, with the sills lowered in the 1980s, and spandrels adorned with foliage and relief terracotta scenes inspired by Shakespeare's plays. The first floor showcases windows with three cusped pointed lights, supported by colonnettes and ashlar heads with roundels, along with two small triangular dormers.

To the right, a narrow section has flanking buttresses and a relief panel. The left range features a pointed entrance with a hood and fanlight above a half-glazed door, and the ground floor has pointed windows similar to those on the right, but with a frieze of diapering and sunflowers on the spandrels. The first floor includes two pointed windows with enriched ashlar tympana and gables, while the window to the right has a terracotta flat arch and cornice.

The corner of the building has a pointed entrance with polished granite shafts and richly detailed capitals on the columns, a cusped tympanum featuring a mosaic of Shakespeare, foliate spandrels, and a relief panel above paired doors. The first floor above this entrance has two pointed windows with shafts and enriched ashlar tympana and spandrels, topped with a frieze and cornice, and a pyramidal roof with a triangular dormer and finial.

The right return to Ely Street mirrors the main façade, featuring a two-storey, single-bay range alongside a two-storey with attic, four-window range and a gabled two-storey end block. The interior includes pointed recesses with rich capitals on pilasters and a coffered ceiling. This building is a notable example of High Victorian Gothic architecture, which is rare in Stratford-upon-Avon.