51, Broad Street

This is an office building on Broad Street, Bristol, dating to 1868 and designed by Ponton and Gough. It is constructed of limestone ashlar with sandstone dressings, ashlar gable stacks, and a slate roof. The building is of a double-depth plan and built in a polychromatic Venetian Gothic Revival style, with three storeys and an attic. It has a six-window range.

The symmetrical front elevation features a ground floor with three open bays divided by square piers, moulded capitals, a right-hand carriage arch, a central plate-glass window, and two 20th-century doors set back in the left-hand arch. A first-floor sill band is present, followed by a zigzag sill band on the second floor, a moulded third-floor sill band, a cornice, and a parapet. An arcade on the first floor features three large pointed arches with polychrome voussoirs, hood mouldings, and carved dragons in the spandrels. Each arch contains a pair of 2-centre arches set within sandstone columns with pedestals and crocket capitals, foliate spandrels, and rounded panels in the tympanum. The second floor has three rectangular recesses with moulded lintels, each containing a pair of windows with shouldered lintels on sandstone columns, similar to the first floor, with dated panels. The end piers have carved imposts. The third-floor arcade features small 2-centre polychrome arches on shafts with crocket capitals, with alternate inner pairs of ashlar panels displaying shields held in the jaws of a dragon. The parapet has a blind balustrade of slim columns with trefoil panelled dies.

The interior was reported to have been extensively remodelled in the mid-19th century; it has not been inspected. This building is one of several similar designs by the architects, including No. 18 Nicholas Street.