Midland Bank

CHELTENHAM

SO9422SE PROMENADE 630-1/13/728 (South East side) 14/12/83 Nos.2 AND 4 Midland Bank

GV II

Banking hall. 1880, for the Worcester City and County Bank. Architect WH Knight. Ashlar with pink granite columns and slate mansard roof; end brick and ashlar stacks to each range. Built in a florid French Renaissance style. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys with attic, 1 (to angle) + 4 first-floor windows with 2-storey and attic, 3 first-floor window range to right. Ground-floor windows divided by channelled pilaster strips ornamented with swagged corbels to cornice over ground floor, cross mullion windows with decorative carved floral panels over to ground-floor frieze and with carved panels and bracket cornices over the first-floor windows. Continuous carved second-floor sill band. Windows to second floor set in recesses. Crowning modillion cornice and balustraded parapet throughout. 2 first-floor oriels to right (one to main range, one to lower range), capped by coats of arms and strapwork and have mottoes. Further similar oriel to chamfered corner at left, with bank entrance beneath between columns with floral capitals: panelled double doors with blind fanlight. Roof dormers to attics, those to main range behind balustrade, otherwise with 2-light mullion-and-transom windows and pediments. Left return has similar facade. INTERIOR: not inspected. HISTORICAL NOTE: The Promenade was laid out in 1818 as a tree-lined avenue connecting the Colonnade in High Street to the Sherborne Spa (on the site of the Queen's Hotel (qv)). Forms a group with Nos 6-24 (even) Promenade (qv). (Sampson A and Blake S: A Cheltenham Companion: Cheltenham: 1993-; The Buildings of England: Verey D: Gloucestershire: The Vale and The Forest of Dean: London: 1970-: 146).

Listing NGR: SO9495222492