National Westminster Bank

This is a National Westminster Bank, built in 1901 to designs by Sir George Oatley. The building is constructed of ashlar Bath stone and is three storeys high, with attics. It has a deep entablature with a dentilled cornice above the ground floor, supporting a giant order of four attached Ionic columns with entasis. Above this is a further eaves entablature with a dentilled cornice and a balustrade masking the roof.

The facade is divided into six ranges of sash windows; those on the ground floor are round-arched. The three bays on the left flank the building with polygonal buttresses topped with elaborate scrolls. Between these are segmental relieving arches with a cartouche attached to their apex. The next two windows have blocked architrave surrounds. The right-hand bay features a ten-panelled double door with a segmental fanlight, set in deep moulded reveals and flanked by polygonal buttresses supporting enormous ornamental consoles topped with a moulded and dentilled stone hood, which is flat but curves upward in a segmental shape. The buttresses terminate with scrolls, mirroring those on the left, and the ground floor entablature protrudes.

The two bays on the left break forward of the giant order on both the first and second floors. The second bay then breaks forward slightly in advance of the first and third. On the first floor, the window is round-arched and has moulded strings at impost level. Above it, two elaborate consoles support a flat, segmental-curved stone hood. The windows in the first and second bays feature unusual shouldered architraves and three plain horizontal bands. The remaining three bays have windows with shouldered architraves and broken triangular pediments. A continuous run of three plain horizontal bands extends across the whole front at the second floor level. All windows have moulded sills and architraves, with keystones. The second window from the left is tripartite, with completely plain stone mullions. In the attic, a dormer above the second bay from the left has a flat, moulded stone cornice and three sashes separated by plain stone mullions. Three wooden dormers above the three bays on the right have sashes and alternate triangular and segmental pediments. The building forms a group with numbers 49 and 50A on South Street.