Bayntun'S Bookshop

Bayntun's Bookshop, on Manvers Street

A former Post Office sorting office, now operating as a bookshop and book-bindery with reading room, attached workshop, and store. Built in 1901, possibly designed by FW Gardiner or the Office of Works.

The building comprises a main range in limestone ashlar with a plain tile roof, and a yellow brick rear range with slate roof. The principal feature is a broad gabled range in Jacobean style, characterised by four narrow face gables. Behind this, set at right angles, is an extensive two-storey workshop—a very broad industrial shed—accessed from the service road. A service throughway to the left of the main front, now enclosed, connects these elements.

The exterior presents two storeys over a basement. The upper storey features narrow slit windows in each gable, and two-light casements with stone recessed ovolo mould mullion and transom, with leaded upper lights. The ground floor is dominated by a succession of wide round arched openings with small drip courses to stops. Bays one and three contain hardwood casements in three lights with leading above the transom, set into deep splayed stone sills. The central bay features a large fanlight with double radial bars, beneath which are concave recessed side display windows with glazing bars and glazed doors, all set upon a sandstone landing raised two plus one steps. To the right is a similarly set back bay with a flight of three plus one sandstone steps leading to a landing with splayed recessed lights, glazed doors, and fanlight. At the far left, a single-storey bay is similarly recessed, with an arched opening under a drip course topped by a slight ogee and finial, set within splayed jambs and containing glazed doors under transom lights and a fanlight with rectangular glazing. A moulded drip course runs above the ground floor arches, beneath a broad band forming a sill band that continues as parapet coping to the first bay.

The basement contains three large three-light wood casements beneath broad segmental heads. The left return gable and front gables feature saddle-back shouldered copings and square ashlar end stacks: the left stack has triple octagonal shafts, while the right has double shafts. The left return elevation shows a two-light window at first floor, matching the front, with an external stack. Five original downpipes with cleats run beneath square hoppers and short runs of ogee guttering. A central octagonal louvered ventilator with tile skirt and leaded spire rises to the ridge.

The rear elevation displays a very broad main gable and a smaller gable to the right, constructed in brick. Above three wide industrial casements and a door with deep transom light—accessed via an external industrial steel staircase at lower ground floor level—is an oculus. Three wide segmental arches span two windows and a pair of wide plank doors at lower ground. A smaller bay to the right features two lights above a wide garage door set on a steel lintel. A small external stack rises off a corbel to the right of the oculus, with a further brick stack positioned to the rear of the front range.

Across the main front runs bold cast iron railing with a doubled and embellished bottom-rail, set on a stone curb. The railing is arranged in two bays on each side of centre, returned at the left end and continuing to the central doorway. The far left end is marked by a heavy square pier, while the right-hand end has smaller piers framing a second entrance with returned lengths of iron railing. Original pairs of gates remain opposite each entrance.

The interior was not inspected.

This Cotswold-influenced front represents a bold statement of Edwardian retail confidence and stands among the least altered shop fronts remaining in the city.