Victoria Law Courts

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SP 0787 SW 30/3

City Centre CORPORATION STREET (west side) B2 Victoria Law Courts

21.1.70

GV I

1887-91 and won in competition by Sir Aston Webb and Ingress Bell. Red brick and terracotta; green stone tiled roof. Mostly two storeys; the main facade with a symmetrical centrepiece plus, on the left, a long wing essentially L-shaped and with two gables, one faced with a bow window, the other with a tall narrow bay with concave-sided gable and, on the right, a gabled bay. Everywhere elaborate detailing executed by Aumonier from the architects' designs. The centrepiece with central porch with richly decorated gabled and flanking turrets and, either side, four single-storeyed bays with cross-windows and big octagonal towers with pointed caps.

Above and behind this stands the Great Hall with steeply-sloping balustraded and crested roof and centrally-placed gabled clock stage. Good Arts and Crafts detail with figure sculpture by Harry Bates and Walter Crane. Inside, the Great Hall is a completely symmetrical room five bays by three. The round-headed windows are of three-lights with one transom on the long sides and of five lights with two transoms on the short sides. All have panel-type tracery and the roof is of hammerbeam construction. Despite this, the rich and strong detail, now in sand-coloured terracotta, is of a Spanish Plateresque kind. Between the windows are empty niches with their bases supported by very pretty putti.

Left and right are passages with stilted arches carrying first floor balconied passages, straight ahead a sumptuously ornate arch with concave-sided gable like the arch into the hall. A shallow tunnel-vaulted and richly-pannelled passage leads to the courtrooms beyond. Stained glass designed by Walter Lonsdale; five enormous crown-like chandeliers of excellent design. The courts themselves all with good joinery and fittings, modest in the smaller courts like Nos 1 and 3, grander in the larger ones like Nos 5 and 6 which have elaborately canopied judges' chairs and originally, as still in No 5 court, a Tudor-type ceiling with pendant bosses.

Listing NGR: SP0731387308