35, Corn Street

This is a bank, built in the 1811, with a 14th/15th century vault underneath. It may have been designed by John Nash for Miles Bank. The exterior was redesigned in 1879, possibly by W Gingell. The bank is constructed from limestone ashlar with a hipped Welsh slate roof and a central glazed lantern. It has a single-depth plan.

The front of the building is in an Italian Renaissance Revival style. It is a single storey, with a three-window range. A symmetrical front features pilasters with faceted rustication on the ground floor, banded decoration above to a panelled frieze, four groups of triple brackets to a cornice, and dies with patera to three sections of balustrade. The ground floor is rusticated to a plat band. The central doorway has octagonal plinths to Tuscan columns, with vermiculated blocks set in coved reveals, leading to an entablature with an inset roll-moulding, a segmental pediment, and double six-panel doors. Tall windows either side rise through the plat band, with blocks to the architrave below. These windows have small windows above the doorway, all with eared architraves, entablatures similar to the door, and pediments. The outer windows have nine-pane sashes.

The interior has an open banking hall with an intermediate cornice and a ceiling cornice. There’s a rear, open semicircular arch, and a round lantern with panelled sides, likely retaining much of the original decorative scheme.

Beneath the street, there are vaulted brick cellars. Within these is a 14th/15th century vault with three chamfered pointed arches leading from the street. This joins a straight joint marking the rear wall of a medieval tenement. Two wide, chamfered pointed-arched doorways lead to vaulted cells, approximately 5 metres wide by 6 metres deep, with a similar arch to the right of the rear wall. The left-hand doorway has chamfered jambs. To the front on the right are four chamfered voussoirs of a segmental arch. The vault has three chamfered transverse ribs, split to form Y ribs meeting common springers at the front.

Historically, the facade originally had a low arch and three smaller, unmoulded windows. John Nash was working at Blaise House for Harford, who was a partner in Miles Bank. The building is an exceptionally fine and complete example of an early 19th-century bank and retains a rare and notable example of a late medieval vaulted undercroft. A glazed lobby in the 20th century connects it to a Banker's House dating back to around 1770, which is an important component of the late Georgian bank.