The Law Society

The Law Society headquarters, located on Chancery Lane and incorporating numbers 17 to 19 Bell Yard, was originally built in 1831 by Lewis Vulliamy and later extended in 1902-4 by Charles Holden, who was then an assistant to Percy Adams. The original building is constructed of Portland stone with a slate roof and exhibits dignified, crisply executed Grecian detailing. It is two storeys high, with a granite basement, and has nine windows across the front. A central doorway is set within the base of an Ionic pedimented portico supported by four unfluted columns in antis. The recessed sash windows are framed by shallow moulded architraves, with those on the first floor rising from a sill band and featuring sharply profiled cornices. A full crowning entablature extends from the portico. Cast iron area railings are present. The rear elevations to Bell Yard are three storeys high and consist of twenty bays, with a three-bay return to Carey Street; this section has a more complex design, featuring a channelled ground floor with piers, pilasters, and columns. A cornice and balustraded parapet tops the rear elevation. The interior features a wide entrance hall and a particularly impressive double-height reading room with red marble giant columns and pilasters. Holden’s extension forms a corner pavilion on Carey Street, constructed of Portland stone with a slate roof. While it respects the cornice heights of Vulliamy’s building, Holden demonstrates remarkable originality, combining neo-classical composition with Mannerist details and cubic massing. The extension has two main storeys and a high blind attic with a set-back attic over the centre. The façades feature a principal bay with lower, narrower flanking bays of three storeys, and a two-storey, three-bay wing along Carey Street with a set-back storey and dormered mansard. The channelled ground floor incorporates a modified Diocletian window with sculpture by C Pibworth, while the first floor features an idiosyncratically designed Venetian window; markedly narrow flanking windows are plainly neo-classical, surmounted by oculi to the ground floor, Michaelangelesque in their framing to the first and second floors. The main central bays rise above their flanks to a bold dentil cornice and a tall attic returned to the re-entrant angle, above which rises a topmost central blind attic storey with pilaster-piers and a blocking course over a plain cornice. The wing’s tall, narrow, architraved and corniced first-floor windows are a feature. Holden’s interiors reveal an Arts and Crafts sensibility, including a low staircase within a tunnel-like vault with stained glass windows, leading to a first-floor reception room with oak and mahogany panelling and marble finishes. Wood carving by William Aumonier and moulded friezes by Conrad Dressler are incorporated, alongside similar high-quality ground-floor reception rooms. The south end of the Law Society building is situated within the City of London.