5, FAIRCHILD PLACE (See details for further address information)

Former shops, dwellings and bank premises for the National Penny Bank, now office and residential accommodation with café. Built in 1878 to designs by architects Temple & Forster.

The building is a five-storey structure with a distinctive acute bull-nosed rounded corner facing the junction of Great Eastern Street and Fairchild Place. This corner configuration is a characteristic feature of the street planning along Great Eastern Street, which had been cut through in 1872–6. The frontage to Great Eastern Street spans six window bays, while the return to Fairchild Place has seven window bays, with the corner itself marked by a pair of blind windows.

The exterior is constructed of white Suffolk brick with sandstone dressings and patterned stucco bands. Windows are paired with iron colonettes and moulded stone lintels. Terra cotta panels, each inscribed with the words "NATIONAL PENNY BANK" over a pair of pennies, provide distinctive ornamental detail. On Great Eastern Street, two shop fronts feature round-headed wooden window frames with some later alteration. The Fairchild Place return elevation includes a bay of original iron balconies, now infilled with early 21st-century windows that preserve the visual idea of the formerly open balconies. At ground floor level is a wide door with architrave beneath the words "PENNY BANK CHAMBERS", flanked to the left by three windows and one door, each set beneath arched openings decorated with a guilloche band. A further shop front appears at the far right of the side elevation, featuring moulded console brackets. Ground floor alterations have been made, but the building otherwise remains largely unaltered.

The building was originally designed with a workshop in the basement, shops and bank premises on the ground floor with related accommodation on the first floor, and artisans' dwellings on the upper storeys accessed by a stone stair. The National Penny Bank, founded in 1875, followed the model of the Yorkshire Penny Bank established in Halifax in 1859 by Colonel Edward Akroyd as a philanthropic organization providing savings opportunities for the working classes. Thirteen National Penny Bank premises were erected, sited on the main thoroughfares of London. The banks operated in the evenings and initially accepted deposits of less than a shilling, embodying the Victorian self-help ethos. The Great Eastern Street premises is among the earliest listed examples of such institutions. The building later served as a Post Office and was refurbished in 1984–5 and again in 2005, since when it has been used as office and residential accommodation with a small café. It has group value with the similarly styled building at 8 Great Eastern Street, the pair flanking the thoroughfare as part of significant Victorian Metropolitan Improvement.