Bank House

Bank House is a large town house, built in 1788 for Robert Were Fox, and remodelled and refronted around 1868. It is constructed of stucco over brick, with concrete tiles to the front roof and asbestos slate to the rear roof. The building follows a double-depth plan and is arranged over three storeys, with a five-window front, the central bay and the bay to its right being slightly wider. Features include a mid-floor string course, rusticated quoins, keyed moulded architraves with sill brackets, and a heavy moulded parapet cornice. The windows are late 19th-century four-pane horns sashes. A near-central tripartite porch has square columns, a moulded entablature, a parapet with moulded corner caps, and a round-arched doorway with a plain fanlight above a four-panel door. A 20th-century lean-to extension has been added to the ground floor on the right. The interior contains an open-well open-string staircase and a moulded ceiling cornice to the entrance hall; the rest of the interior was not inspected but is likely to contain features of interest. Bank House was the family home of the Fox family until 1864, when the lease was sold. Subsequently, the north end of the building was used as a biscuit factory, and the basement and yard were used as a coal store. A fire in 1868 destroyed the roof, but the sturdy construction meant the walls remained intact. Following repairs, the building became Bank House Hotel and was later taken over by the YMCA in the early 1930s.