NatWest Bank

The NatWest Bank was built around 1902, likely designed by Horace Cheston and Joseph Craddock Perkin. It occupies a triangular corner site and is constructed of buff-coloured ashlar with a grey granite plinth and Welsh slate roofs; the rear elevations are of stock brick. The building’s original layout included a banking hall, waiting room, manager's office, and strong room on the ground floor, with domestic accommodation for the manager on the upper floors. This internal layout is now lost.

The architectural style is Edwardian ‘Free Classical’, combining elements of Jacobean and Italian Mannerist design. The main part of the building features two three-bay wings running obliquely back on either side of a canted corner block. Each wing has two superimposed orders of engaged half-columns with an architrave, frieze, and cornice. The ground floor is rusticated with a Doric order above the rock-faced granite plinth, while the first floor has a smaller Ionic order with a diminutive rusticated sub-order forming the window-jambs and mullions. A deep modillion cornice tops the façade, above which is a balustrade; the steep-pitched roof has broad slab-like ridge stacks. The corner element is a key architectural feature, rising with a large Dutch gable featuring urns, string-courses, and a crowning aedicule above a polygonal bay window set between two domed polygonal turrets. These turrets are corbelled out at first-floor level, appearing to break through broken triangular pediments resting on paired columns framing the main entrance. A single-storey wing to the right replicates the ground-floor treatment for seven bays, with a secondary entrance at the western end. A plain, two-bay, two-storey wing on the left-hand side is a mid-20th century extension and is not included in the listing.

The banking hall was gutted around 2000, so original interior features are now lost or concealed. Under the provisions of section 1(5A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, the modern fittings in the ground-floor banking area are not considered to be of special architectural or historic interest. Other interior spaces were not inspected.