Albion Chambers and attached railings and gate

Offices, with shops to the Small Street front, constructed in 1833.

MATERIALS: brick with limestone dressings and lateral stacks, stuccoed courtyard blocks with brick ridge stacks and hipped pantile roofs.

PLAN: four double-depth blocks arranged symmetrically to the sides of a T-shaped courtyard.

EXTERIOR: the symmetrical Small Street elevation is of four storeys and five bays with cornice and ashlar parapet. Its details are in the Greek Revival style. The ground-floor shop fronts have an arch to a through passage; the archway has a moulded archivolt with outer moulding of palmettes, a shell-like fanlight panel containing an acroterion above the lintel, and panelled jambs, repeated at the ends of the shop fronts with plate-glass windows. The windows above have plate-glass sashes in architraves, which are eared and battered with cornices and ashlar aprons on the first floor, with a central eared square window, and battered on the second floor. The left return at ground floor is of random limestone ashlar in the manner of the neighbouring former Assizes, and was rebuilt between 1865 and 1870 to enclose the space in front of it.

The courtyard behind has matching blocks facing across the sides, and a third across the end, with a through passage to Broad Street. Each office block is of three storeys; they are five-window ranges, each with a coped parapet, the side pair with an eared, battered architrave and six-panelled doors, that to the east end with an eared, segmental-arched architrave and large keystone to the passage, small end windows with raised surrounds, with curved, wrought-iron brackets to a lamp over the doorway, and a clock over the first-floor window set in an ornate square panel; eight-over-eight-pane sashes with fine bars, some replaced with horned and plate-glass sashes.

INTERIOR: the Small Street block has an entrance in the right-hand side of the passage; details include a stone cantilevered oval open-well winder stair, with wrought-iron railings, and floors of stone laid on iron I-section beams; second-floor fire surround with panelled jambs and mantle to roundels; brick groin vaults in basement. The two side blocks have similar open dogleg stairs, and the eastern block has an open-well stair above the western entrance; panelled reveals to six-panelled doors.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: attached cast-iron spear-headed railings and gate with palmette finials to the basement steps in the north end of the courtyard.