Former Everard'S Printing Works

BRISTOL

ST5873SE BROAD STREET, Centre 901-1/11/527 (North West side) 08/01/59 Nos.37 AND 38 Former Everard's Printing Works

GV II*

Printing works, now office. 1900-1, demolished behind c1970. By Henry Williams, facade by WJ Neatby, Chief Designer for Doulton and Co. For Edward Everard, printer. Polychromatic 'Carrara' marble-ware faience. Pre-Raphaelite style. 3 storeys; 4-window range. A symmetrical gabled front has blue plinth to sill level, white above with a thin ground-floor impost band, a wide band over windows, first-floor impost band, crenellated parapet to recessed second-floor windows between octagonal turrets with cupolas, and moulded coping. A wide semicircular-arched doorway has a blocked architrave and hoodmould, flanking elliptical-arched windows, and a band above with coloured stylised trees and hearts. A pair of semicircular-arched first-floor windows with a central octagonal column, square impost and coloured base, EDWARD EVERARD in Art Nouveau lettering above the cills, beneath decorative spandrel panels featuring Gutenburg (L) and Morris (R) at presses with their respective alphabets, and an angel reading in the middle. Behind the parapet is a second-floor arcade of 4 semicircular arches with blocked architraves, brown columns and imposts; the cupolas have similar columns to a frieze of coloured hearts, with brown domes and finials. In the gable is a semicircular-arched panel with an allegorical figure holding a lamp (Light) and scales (Truth). An entrance lobby has a blue plinth, coloured dado, white above to a frieze, and panelled plaster ceiling. INTERIOR: completely rebuilt behind the facade. A timber fire surround and terracotta hopper are mounted in the foyer. Formerly part of a larger printing works by Williams in brown terracotta, of which a further part survives in No.1 John Street (qv). An important early use of glazed coloured external ware to propagate Arts and Crafts ideas of the reconciliation of art and industry, in the largest decorative facade of its kind in Britain. (Crick C: Victorian Buildings in Bristol: Bristol: 1975-: 66; Gomme A, Jenner M and Little B: Bristol, An Architectural History: Bristol: 1979-: 409; The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: North Somerset and Bristol: London: 1958-: 426; Country Life: London: 1971-: 412).

Listing NGR: ST5878173155