Merchant Hall And Attached Front Garden Walls, Piers And Gates

The Merchant Hall, built in 1868 by Popes and Bindon, is a pair of attached houses now serving as a club. The structure is made of limestone ashlar and pink sandstone rubble, with limestone dressings, lateral and party wall stacks, and a slate hipped roof. It has a double-depth plan and consists of two storeys, an attic, and a basement, featuring a symmetrical front with entrance porches that are set forward at the ends. The building includes rusticated quoins, a ground-floor cornice, and a deep, bracketed cornice that is interrupted by attic windows.

The ashlar porches have open semicircular arches and balustrades, with two similar arched windows on the sides and a semicircular-arched doorway with fanlights. The lower pavilions behind the porches have hipped roofs. The ground floor has an arcade of semicircular-arched windows, with the middle window being blind and set forward, featuring faceted jambs. The first-floor windows are flat-headed with architraves, and the enlarged attic windows have eared architraves. The end pavilions have paired semicircular-arched first-floor windows, with similar windows above in the attic.

Inside, the former party walls have been removed to create a large central hall that spans the full width of the building, featuring a reset Imperial stair and various fittings imported from other houses. The property also includes attached front garden rubble walls with two pairs of large gate piers topped with modillion cornices and wrought-iron gates. The Merchant Hall is a large and heavily decorated building located on an important site, contributing to its group value.