Old Post Office

BRISTOL

ST5872NE CORN STREET, Centre 901-1/16/569 (South West side) 08/01/59 No.48 Old Post Office (Formerly Listed as: CORN STREET (South side) Nos.46 AND 56 Exchange Buildings)

GV I

Post office, now offices. 1746, part rebuilt as facsimile 1993. By Samuel Glascodine. Limestone ashlar with lateral ashlar stacks, roof not visible. Open plan with central stairwell. Palladian style. 3 storeys and attic; 3-window range. A symmetrical front has a pedimented centre set forward, plinth, impost band, plat band, rusticated quoins above to an entablature with cornice and parapet. Ground-floor semicircular arches with moulded archivolts and keys, C20 glazing and central glazed double doors. Upper windows have architraves, sill blocks, pediments to the first floor, and horned 6/6-pane and 3/6-pane sashes; wide dormer. The left-hand return is a 11-window range: right-hand 3-window range as the front, with OLD POST OFFICE inscribed in the plat band; to the right 4:1:3 windows, with a raised entrance section set back containing a tall doorway with Gibbs surround, a pedimented first-floor window and a semicircular-arched second-floor window beneath a cartouche with festoon. Each side are windows as the front. INTERIOR: largely remodelled late C20; the side doorway leads to an open-well stair, with cast-iron stick balusters and column newels, and a ramped moulded rail. Designed to compliment the Exhange (qv), and a balancing pair with No.56 (qv). (Ison W: The Georgian Buildings of Bristol: Bath: 1952-: 108; Gomme A, Jenner M and Little B: Bristol, An Architectural History: Bristol: 1979-: 149; The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: North Somerset and Bristol: London: 1958-: 416).

Listing NGR: ST5883072990