The Black Friar Public House

THE BLACK FRIAR PUBLIC HOUSE

Public house dating to circa 1875, remodelled circa 1905 and 1917 by architect H Fuller Clark, with sculptural work by Frederick Callcott and Henry Poole. The building is constructed in yellow stock brick with granite and Portland stone dressings, enriched with mosaic, sculpture and copper panel work. It has a flat roof with two tall chimneys and occupies a roughly triangular corner site on Queen Victoria Street and New Bridge Street, with four storeys above cellars.

The building presents a ground floor public house frontage extending around all elevations, featuring segmental arched entrances to both streets and the chamfered corner angle. Transom and mullion windows with small panes sit above segmental arched cellar lights. A deep mosaic fascia carries the words "Saloon / 174 / The Black Friar / 174 / Brandies", interrupted by carved panels depicting drinking and devilry that surmount entrance flanking piers with bronze directional and advertising panels depicting friars. The Queen Victoria Street entrance features a mosaic tympanum of a friar. Above each entrance is an elaborate wrought-iron sign with lamp.

The upper floor windows are architraved. Those to Queen Victoria Street are tripartite with enriched pediments to the first and second floors. The chamfered angle features a clock on the first floor with enriched segmental pediments to the second floor. The New Bridge Street elevation has enriched pediments to the first and second floors, except above the entrance where a segmental pediment extends from the doorcase. Patterned cast-iron window guards are fitted throughout. A projecting cornice and blocking course finish the external composition.

The interior displays exceptional Arts and Crafts detailing, clad throughout in variegated marble with brass, mosaic, wood and copper reliefs. The main bar features an enriched fireplace recess framed by a broad tripartite arch enclosing corner seats. The grate is fitted with firedogs surmounted by imps, and the overmantle carries a bronze bas-relief of singing friars entitled "Carols", flanked by two friars' heads with swags above the seats. A stained glass window depicts a friar in a sunlit garden. Above the bar is a bronze bas-relief entitled "Tomorrow will be Friday" showing monks catching trout and eels. Above the entrance to the Grotto sits a further relief entitled "Saturday afternoon" depicting gardening monks whose produce is coloured in enamels.

The Grotto is a small, windowless vaulted room excavated from a railway vault, designed by Clark in 1913 but not executed until 1917–21 due to the war. It is entered from three arcaded arches with bas-relief monks on the pillars. The vault is mosaic with marble-clad ribs. The end walls each feature a bronze relief: one entitled "Don't advertise, tell a gossip" shows monks doing weekly wash; the other, "A good thing is soon snatched up", depicts monks pushing a trussed pig in a wheelbarrow. Below the cornice are devils representing music, drama, painting and literature.

The side walls feature six alabaster capitals illustrating nursery rhymes and 16 smaller capitals illustrating Aesop's Fables, with mottoes such as "Haste is slow" rendered in good electro-gilt letters by the Birmingham Guild. Four lamp brackets support alabaster figures of Morning, Evening, Noon and Night, each holding up a bronze monk with water buckets. At one end is a relief entitled "Contentment surpasses riches" depicting a sleeping monk surrounded by fairies, executed with mother of pearl and semi-precious stone inlay. A "window" arrangement of mirrors with red marble colonettes is positioned below, and further mirrors throughout the Grotto enhance the small space.