Brown Shipley & Co Ltd

This private bank was designed around 1970 and built between 1973 and 1975 by Fitzroy Robinson & Partners. The building incorporates a single bay from an earlier 1848 building on its Founders Court elevation. It is constructed with a frame clad in dark brown-grey polished Swedish Blaubrun granite with bronze-anodised windows. The structure rises five storeys with three basement levels beneath.

Plan and Setting

The building has a squat T-shaped plan. A linear range runs west to east, fronting Moorgate, with a short projection on the south side containing the main stair and lifts. This projection abuts an adjacent building. The site slopes gently downward from north to south.

Exterior

The front elevation facing Moorgate comprises four bays with a slightly taller ground floor. Large windows are set within deep moulded frames with splayed reveals. On the four upper floors, lesser mullions subdivide the bays to form paired windows.

The main entrance occupies the ground floor of the third bay. A pair of solid bronze doors, each weighing 1¼ tonnes and costing £24,000 in 1975, feature high-relief roundel designs by A. John Poole. Replacement glazed inner doors behind these lead into the former banking hall, now a reception area. Gilded lettering on each splayed polished-granite doorway jamb reads 'Brown Shipley & Co. Limited'. Bronze screens with abstract low-relief designs, also by Poole, are attached in front of the ground-floor windows.

The rear elevation facing St Margaret's churchyard consists of three bays and shares the same styling as the front elevation.

The south side elevation faces into the Founders Court alleyway and comprises a single-bay Baroque-style ashlar facade retained from the 1848 building, though with alterations evident in historic photographs. The ground floor has a tall arched doorway flanked by piers with vermiculated banded rustication and a central keystone above depicting a god's head. The doorway contains a partly-glazed panelled door set within a glazed screen with a fanlight above. Above the entrance is an ornate double-height surround incorporating a segmental pediment supported by hybridised decorated Ionic columns with a scrolled apron below. Below the apron is a balustraded ornamental balcony. The surround originally contained banded rustication, but a tripartite window was inserted in 1973–5 to light the second floor. Historic photographs reveal the facade has been raised: the balcony originally sat immediately above the entrance keystone but now sits higher above a stringcourse. Immediately above the segmental pediment, just below a deep dentillated eaves cornice, is a glazed roundel added in 1973–5 that lights the third floor. Set back above the cornice are the two uppermost floors of the 1973–5 build, clad with Portland stone and each with a wide window.

The near part of the return wall to the left in Founders Court forms the rear elevation of the stair hall and lift projection and is clad in Portland stone. A tall ground-floor doorway has square-panelled doors and a wedge lintel above. To the left of the doorway, a stone is engraved with bronze lettering reading 'Brown Shipley & Co Limited', whilst to the right is an engraved foundation stone laid in 1973. Ventilators to the upper floors have been designed to resemble windows with wedge lintels.

Interior

Internally the building has been heavily altered on all floor levels and spaces have been modernised. At the time of writing in 2014, further refurbishment works were ongoing. Originally there was a proliferation of bronze and dark marble throughout the interior, including custom-made bronze light switches, but these features have since been removed. As the bank no longer stores cash on site or provides a cash service, the banking hall is no longer needed.

The former ground-floor banking hall has been opened up to create a large reception area with glazed-partitioned meeting rooms flanking the entrance. Originally it featured a long bronze banking counter with bronze-tinted glass, downlighting, dark-coloured marble wall cladding and a contrasting paler marble floor, but all these features have been removed. An open-plan office space on the north side of the ground floor has been partly incorporated into the reception space and partitioned to create further meeting rooms and a disabled toilet. A lift shaft that originally transported bullion between the ground and basement levels survives behind a later stud wall in the disabled toilet, though the lift car itself has been removed; the lift doors are visible in the basement.

The main lift lobbies on each floor originally had dark-coloured marble wall cladding and bronze moulded lift doors, but the cladding has been replaced by pale polished stone and plain lift doors have been installed; the lift car interiors have also been refurbished.

An altered and modernised lobby area exists just within the Founders Court side entrance. This space contains a wall-mounted plaque of carved wood commemorating the bank's employees killed during the First and Second World Wars, retained from the 1848 building. A former foreign exchange counter area off the north side of the lobby is now a kitchen, and the former clerks/dealers space at the eastern end of the ground floor is now a modern break-out space with an inserted late 20th-century mezzanine.

The elegant main stair gives access to all floor levels and lies within the building's southern projection. It has a sinuous form wrapping around a narrow open well with a solid balustrade with a sweeping line on the half-landing levels. The balustrade has a roughcast-render finish to the well face and pale Italian marble cladding to the stair-flight face and balustrade copings. The balustrade is surmounted by a raised brass handrail. A goods lift with replacement doors is accessed off the stair's landings.

An additional secondary stair is located to the rear right/eastern end of the building and also accesses all floors. It has a marble riser in place of a closed string and a metal balustrade with a bronze handrail. The balustrade echoes the sinuous design of the main stair, although the secondary stair itself has sharp angles.

The upper floors are largely open-plan with original partitions removed. Additional secondary glazing has been added internally to the third-floor windows and, at the time of writing, was due to be added to the windows of the remaining floors.

A meeting/boardroom at the eastern end of the fifth floor—originally the directors' large dining room designed as a replica of one of the rooms in the 1848 building—has been refurbished and altered. However, the room's east wall, which is fully glazed with bronze-anodised frames and sliding patio doors, is included within the listing. The doors lead out onto a terrace with views over to the Bank of England. The terrace has a decked floor and bronze railings set behind a parapet. An identical terrace is located at the western end of the fifth floor and is accessed through an identically styled glazed wall and sliding doors.

The building's three basement levels contain a mixture of modernised meeting rooms, stores, plant rooms, the former canteen, and vaults.