The Viaduct Public House

The Viaduct Public House is a public house built between 1874 and 1875, with an interior remodelled from 1898 to 1900 by Arthur Dixon. The building features a granite ground floor and an upper floor made of gault brick with painted stone dressings, topped by a slate mansard roof and brick end stacks with moulded stone cornices. It occupies a curved corner site and is designed in the Italianate style, standing four storeys tall with a six-window range and an additional bay on the ground floor.

The ground floor is distinguished by grey and red granite piers with festooned Ionic capitals, a red granite frieze, and moulded grey cornices. There are three doorways with half-glazed double doors set in recessed lobbies, featuring bracketed semicircular arches on the outer bays, all adorned with relief carvings in the Flemish Renaissance style, including medallion portraits in the spandrels of the outer arches. The windows on this level are three-light plate-glass windows that also have relief carvings on the mullions and transoms.

The upper-floor windows have plate-glass sashes set in raised architraves, with relief-carved friezes and bracketed cornices on the first-floor windows, pedimental second-floor windows, and a relief-carved frieze above the third-floor windows, which are divided by pilasters with foliate capitals. The building is finished with a dentilled cornice and moulded cornices on the dormer windows.

Inside, the ground-floor bar features a quadrant shape and retains many original fittings, including cut and etched glass panels on a fine Jacobethan-style counter and a semicircular arched hood in front of the rear doorway with relief-carved panels. The bar is surrounded by arcaded panelling, marbled wood piers, and an enriched plaster frieze with cherub heads, a shell-coved cornice, and a strapwork ceiling. The wall to the right showcases tall mirrors alternating with three fine paintings of Pre-Raphaelite style women by Hal, created between 1898 and 1900, all framed in cream, green, and orange marble and alabaster architraves. The Viaduct Public House is noted for its exceptional pub interior, particularly the remarkable paintings.