Trinity College Of Music

Trinity College of Music comprises two terraced houses built around 1875, converted to a music college around 1921-22. The conversion was carried out by architects Cheadle and Harding, who added a new portico and purpose-built rooms.

The buildings are constructed in red brick with stone dressings and quoins, featuring a chanelled ashlar ground floor. They are topped with slated mansard roofs with dormers in the French style, with cast iron cresting and elaborate detailing. The roofline at one angle is steeply pitched with ornamental cast iron cresting.

The complex comprises four storeys, attics and basement on one section (six windows wide), then five storeys to the right-hand angle (two windows wide). The right-hand angle is canted with a single window to each floor. The return elevation includes a blind bay and a bay with a three-light canted bay window.

An asymmetrically positioned two-storey portico of the Ionic order (tetrastyle in antis) dominates the entrance, with the words "Trinity College of Music" inscribed in the frieze. The central porch projects forward with a pediment and features an enriched architrave to the entrance. The door surround is decorated with Greek key patterning over a panel, rounded detail, and lyre and swag enrichment to the frieze. The columns flank architraved sash windows with keystones on the ground floor and casements with wrought iron balconies on the first floor.

The ground floor features segmental arched windows. Upper floors have architraved windows; the first floor displays cornices and a continuous cast iron balcony (stone on the return); the second floor has architraved sashes with cornices and open patterned stone window guards linked by a band; the third floor on the right includes stone aprons. A stone band runs across at third floor level. A projecting bracketed cornice is surmounted by a stone balustrade, with the cornice continuing at fifth floor level on the right-hand bays.

The interior contains decoration and fittings of considerable quality and interest. The entrance hall features a pair of fluted Aeolic columns in oak supporting a plaster entablature, with the frieze resting on the capitals while the architrave passes behind. A carved wood entrance doorcase is surmounted by a figure of Pan. Arches with moulded plaster masks flank the stairs, which are flanked by pilasters with bird capitals. The oak staircase has turned balusters on the upper flights.

The ground floor library is executed in mid-Georgian style with well-executed Kenhan doorcases. The principal first floor rooms comprise a concert hall and boardroom, both finished in a semi-Grecian, semi-Adam style. The boardroom features a well-executed frieze and cornice; the chimney piece is in Greek revival style with anthemian frieze and pilaster capitals, and incorporates a good marble fireplace. The ceiling is in Adam style plaster. The concert hall is panelled in oak to frieze height with fluted pilasters, and features a plaster ceiling of Adam-derived rosettes set within broad plain bands. An organ with a carved oak case is positioned in the concert hall.

The window fanlights contain stained glass coats of arms of past presidents of the college by A K Nicholson. Additional Nicholson glass of considerable interest appears in the west windows along the staircase and in the former library. The panels depict John Fornsete (composer of the earliest known written piece of music in England), Geoffrey Chaucer, Shakespeare, Samuel Pepys (whose panel includes a picture of the building in the right-hand corner), and Henry Purcell. Medallion portraits of Byrd, Gibbons, Lawes, Arne, Sullivan and Edgar are also included. The glass represents the connection between literature and music and is of considerable interest as a declaration of the period's musical taste.