163, North Street

BRIGHTON

TQ3104SW NORTH STREET 577-1/40/604 (North side) No.163

GV II

Commercial offices. Designed for the Royal Insurance Company by Clayton and Black in 1904. Pink granite. Roof of green slate. The plan follows the corner, resulting in a 3-part composition. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys and dormered attic over basement; 4-storey tower bays at party walls and 5-storey tower at corner. 9-window range. Edwardian Baroque style. Flat-arched entrance at corner framed by Tuscan columns set under a deep bracketed porch formed from a semicircular pediment composed of raking cornice only. In the first- and ninth-window ranges are subsidiary flat-arched entrances with shallow lintel porch above topped by a semicircular light. The elevations of the intermediate ranges are identical; segmental-arched basement windows set in a heavily rusticated base; the ground-floor windows are round arched with keyed architraves and arches; the jambs of the side entrances are keyed also. Cornice across the ground floor serves as a base for the first and second floors which are treated, in the intermediary bays, as distyle in antis, the wall behind them treated as a rustication which rises, in the end bays, to form the surface of a third-floor towers. In the corner range the rustication forms piers which support a segmental pediment with arms bearing the legend: The Royal Insurance Company. Above the cornice line the tower sets back one stage, with corner piers, before the final octagonal stage which is capped by a dome. Dormers between the towers are flat arched with segmental pediments and a scalloped parapet between each. All upper-floor windows have architraves and are flat arched, those on the first floor are floor-to-ceiling and set in aedicules topped by segmental pediments with keyed lintels and jambs. Upper-floor windows in the end bays and the centre tower have cornices or pediments. INTERIOR: not inspected.

Listing NGR: TQ3113304213