Former London And County Bank

A three-storey former bank, built around 1862 for the London and County Banking Company Ltd, later converted to a hosier's shop in the Edwardian period and subsequently altered.

Exterior

The building is faced in ashlar stone and spans four window bays. The upper floors are in Italianate style, featuring Composite pilasters to the window surrounds, oversized console brackets above the first floor windows supporting sills with wrought-iron balconettes to the upper storey, and a raised parapet with decorative cornice. The initials 'LCB' are picked out in the tympanum of the piano nobile windows, indicating the building's origins as the London and County Bank.

The ground floor features an Edwardian Art-Nouveau-style shop front in bronze and glass, inserted during the conversion to a hosier. The front is symmetrical, with a granite stall-riser, two large central display windows with decorative transoms, and outer doors in recessed porches. The porch to the right provides access to the shop with bent glass to the display window, while that to the left provides access to the upper floors. The transoms above the doors (in bronze) and the doors themselves (in timber) feature curved glazing bars in an Art-Nouveau design and are original. The porch recesses have polished granite outer reveals and marble floors. The shop front is framed by stone pilasters of the 1860s with Composite capitals. No original signage survives on the ashlar fascia.

Interior

The ground floor shop has been comprehensively refurbished with no original features surviving except unadorned arched recesses in the outer walls in what would have been the banking hall. The upper floors retain more historic character. The staircase survives with some balusters replaced, perhaps in the Edwardian period, at the lower landing. Further up are splat balusters with perforated patterns, which, like the large newel posts in an unusual design of Jacobean inspiration, are original. The upper floors originally housed the bank manager and contain many surviving mid-Victorian residential features, including at least five fireplaces (some in marble), panelled doors, cornices, a ceiling rose, frieze and other plasterwork, and built-in cupboards. All original window joinery survives, including windows overlooking a light well in the centre-right of the building.

History

The London and County Banking Company Ltd occupied this address until the late Edwardian period. In 1909, following a merger that created the London, County and Westminster Bank, the bank relocated to larger premises at No. 3 High Street, Maidstone. The building was then converted into a shop, recorded in the 1913 postal directory for Maidstone as William Morling, hosiers. The Art-Nouveau shop front likely dates from this conversion period. The Maidstone bank bears resemblance to other London and County Bank branches at Basingstoke and Stratford, East London, designed by architect Frederick Chancellor, and may have been designed by him.

By the 1860s, mergers between joint-stock companies had created larger banks increasingly ambitious in building branches. The London and County Bank was in the vanguard of this expansion, being one of the few banks with presence in both the capital and the provinces. Their London headquarters were completed in 1862 to designs by C O Parnell, and by 1875 the bank had 150 branches, making it the largest British bank at that time, reflecting the growing importance of banking to the middle-class high street.