Former Lloyds Bank

A former branch of Lloyds Bank, built in 1903-1905 to the designs of Horace Field.

MATERIALS & PLAN: red brick laid in English bond with Portland stone dressings and a hipped slate roof. The building has three principal floors and an attic and the rear wing has two storeys.

EXTERIOR: the bank is placed on a corner, with a narrow front facing the High Street and a longer return to Peel Street. At the corner is a porch built into the fabric, and now enclosed, with arched openings to the west and north sides. A cartouche at the angle shows the Lloyds emblem of a bee skep with the initials LBL in a deeply-carved Rococo surround. The high street has one broad bay at right which steps forward and is flanked by pilaster buttresses at ground-floor level with quoins. Above this are Ionic pilasters which rise to a pediment. A shallow bow window at ground-floor level fills the space between the buttresses and has a lower body of stone. Above this the windows are paired sashes to the first and second floors with exposed sash boxes and windows of three by six panes. The first-floor windows have gauged heads and slender keystones. The Ionic capitals support a pulvinated frieze. A deep wooden cornice encircles the building at eaves level.

The north face to Peel Street has four principal bays and the sash windows are paired, with gauged heads and keystones to the ground and first floors and exposed sash boxes, as before. Ground-floor windows have segmental heads and the right-hand pair of ground floor bays form part of the corner porch entry, also seen on the High Street frontage, with arched heads to the openings which have now been enclosed and glazed. The outer bays are defined by downpipes with hoppers which bear the date '1904'. The two central windows at second-floor level are wide triple sashes in place of the paired sashes seen below. Three attic dormer windows have flat heads and casement lights. To the left of this is a lower block, built in the 1920s, presumably originally office chambers, of two storeys and four bays whose ground-floor walling is of plum-coloured brick. This later addition is of lesser interest.

INTERIOR: the porch entrance at the corner, which has now been enclosed, has a groin-vaulted ceiling. The rest of the interior was not inspected, but was subdivided and reordered internally by 2009 (see SOURCES, Brittain-Catlin).