The Granary And Attached Area Walls

The Granary, now offices, was built in 1869 and is located on the west side of Welsh Back, Bristol. It was designed by Ponton and Gough and is accompanied by attached area walls to the Queen Charlotte Street elevation. The building is a notable example of the "Bristol Byzantine" style, a Ruskinian Venetian Gothic interpretation with structural polychromy.

It is constructed of red Cattybrook brick with black and white brick and limestone dressings, brick lateral stacks, and a slate hipped roof. The building is seven storeys high, with three additional attic storeys, and has an eleven-window range. Its design features a steep, symmetrical block with a battered plinth of engineering bricks to a ground-floor arcade of two-centred arches. Other prominent features include strings to the first, second, fourth, and fifth floors, a Lombard frieze, a machicolated cornice, a crenellated parapet with forked merlons, deep-set upper windows with rounded-brick surrounds and striped arches, and ashlar impost bands. The ground-floor arcade has a black and white brick ogee hood with oculi, while doorways at either end feature semicircular openings with ogee hoods in recessed panels. Paired granite half-columns with ashlar bases and foliate caps are present at the corners. The first floor has semicircular-arched openings, blocked below the spring by square panels, some of which carry carved shields. Two-storey arched recesses, patterned openwork panels, elliptical-arched openings with pierced panels, and shouldered flat arches are also incorporated into the facade. The end returns display matching openings. Chimneys have sides that have been tumbled in. The steep roof includes narrow gables, a short rear left-hand cross wing, hipped dormers, and decorative ridge tiles. The interior has not been inspected.

The building is considered the finest example of 19th-century Bristol warehouse style, noted for its supposed connections to mercantile architecture of the Eastern Mediterranean. Functional details such as hoist arrangements and ventilation are creatively integrated into the decorative elements.