Council House And Attached Railings And Piers

ST5872NW 901-1/15/72

BRISTOL, COLLEGE GREEN (West side), Council House and attached railings and piers

(Formerly Listed as: COLLEGE GREEN The Council House)

19/03/81

II*

Council house. 1935-1952. By Vincent Harris. Concrete frame clad with very wide, thin bricks, with Portland stone dressings and a leaded hipped roof. Concave axial double-depth plan. Neo-Georgian style. 2 storeys, attic and basement; 38-window range. A very wide, concave bowed front has a stone plinth, first-floor plat band, moulded coping in front of the recessed attic. Full-height porte cocheres to each end, similar 2-storey one to central main entrance. Outer ones have full-height semicircular arches, single-storey side ones, to semicircular-arched doorways with 2-leaf doors swept down to the centre, and first-floor windows with Corinthian columns to pediments on balconies with balustrades. The middle porte cochere is almost detached, with an octagonal base to an ashlar dome, semicircular arches to 3 sides, and blind flanking blocks 4 windows wide. 6/6-pane horned sashes in exposed frames, alternate 3 windows on the ground floor have moulded stone architraves. A very steep and high roof with gilded unicorns to the corners of the end blocks. The rear elevation has 2-storey tetrastyle-in-antis loggias at the ends, linked by pilastrades round to the central projecting block, which has a pilastrade below very large 25/25-pane sashes, and flanking towers with McFall sculptures on top. INTERIOR: sparsely decorated in monumental manner and faced in plain ashlar; details include a central axial passage, and good lamps in the entrance lobby, which has a marble floor; complete original fittings throughout, those to the Committee Rooms being of particular note; horological clock in entrance hall; painted ceilings in the Council Room by John Armstrong on the theme of Bristol and its history, and in the Conference Room by WT Monnington on the theme of molecular and atomic fusion. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: attached railings and octagonal piers to the ends and ramp in front. An important work by the most celebrated civic architect of the first half of the C20. (The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: North Somerset and Bristol: London: 1958-: 413).

Listing NGR: ST5825372747