Former London & County Bank

Former London & County Bank

Bank built in 1905 by architect Godfrey Pinkerton for the London & County Bank, situated at Nos. 8–11 Pavilion Buildings on the east side of Brighton. The building is constructed in buff sandstone with dressings of red sandstone, the roof being obscured by the parapet.

EXTERIOR

The building stands four storeys tall with five windows to the west front, two to the south, and one in the entrance bay at the corner, which is set back in a shallow curve. The architectural details derive partly from the Italian Renaissance and partly from the Greek Revival.

The ground floor is decorated with broad, slightly projecting bands of fluted red sandstone with pilasters between the openings. The main entrance features a flat arch with an elaborately carved architrave, cornice and scrolled pediment set between antae whose faces are carved with scrolling foliage. Above this is an entablature with putti holding shields, and original panelled double doors.

A secondary office entrance to the north is set under a coved round arch with a panelled architrave, entablature, panelled archivolt, foliate keystone and fanlight as tympanum, with a panelled door whose upper panel contains an iron grille of Italian Renaissance design.

All windows are flat-arched. Those on the ground floor have panelled architraves and bracketed pediments in the Greek taste. The windows have tripartite glazing with one transom, the lower part featuring slim metal columns standing in front of each of the mullions, each crowned by an exaggeratedly coved cornice with antefixae. These cornices have been shortened at the base on the two northernmost windows. An entablature runs across the ground floor, with the cornice supporting balconies to the first-floor windows.

The first and second floors above the entrance comprise a single composition. The first-floor window is tripartite with the outer lights featuring architraves and the whole flanked by panels of scrolling foliage, the central light beneath an open pediment filled with festoons in a broadly Palladian manner. Above this pediment is a flat-arched window with egg-and-dart moulding to the architrave and consoles, flanked by emblematic figures carved in low relief—Navigation to the left and apparently Industry to the right.

On the south front, the first-floor windows are flanked by panels of scrolling foliage with segmental pediments above. On the west front, three windows of this design alternate with two having only architrave and cornice. Second-floor windows on both fronts are flat-arched with architraves.

An elaborate entablature spans the second floor, featuring a triglyph frieze with paterae and emblems between, and a mutule cornice. In the attic storey, the entrance bay is set back further behind a screen of paired antae. Other windows are flanked by Doric pilasters but with unmoulded lintels and sashes of original design, with panelled spaces between them. A balustrade above the entrance bay is flanked by panelled and corniced stacks, with a panelled and corniced parapet to the rest of the building.

INTERIOR

The banking hall features a floor of black and white marble, columns and pilasters of neo-Classical design, and a panelled ceiling with egg-and-dart mouldings. A flat-arched entrance at the north end sits within a shallow curved recess with pilasters, archivolt and tympanum decoration in the Adam style. The lobby at the corner entrance has a dado and counter panelled in oak and ebony, with the counter distinctively enriched with inlays.