74 Dyer Street (former offices of the Wiltshire and Gloucestershire Standard)

74 Dyer Street

A purpose-built newspaper office designed by V A Lawson and built in 1904 for the Wiltshire and Gloucestershire Standard. The building is constructed from local limestone with oak dressings.

The building has an irregular plan, with the original range presenting a relatively narrow frontage to Dyer Street that widens slightly towards the rear. A late 20th-century extension, roughly L-shaped and filling space at the rear of this building and the adjacent property at 76 Dyer Street, is excluded from the listing.

The three-storey structure stands in a continuous row of buildings of various dates along Dyer Street and is designed in the Arts and Crafts domestic revival style. The Dyer Street elevation features a single wide bay beneath a steep gabled roof. All windows display small, multi-paned upper lights with plain glazing below.

The ground floor is of limestone ashlar, containing a wide, four-light mullioned and transomed window to the left and an entrance door to the right. The door comprises a panelled timber door with a plain rectangular overlight. Both the window and door are framed by Renaissance-style pilasters of moulded, tapering columns mounted on moulded feet and topped with composite capitals featuring Ionic scrolls and cherub heads. A deep frieze above is inscribed "WILTS AND GLOUCESTERSHIRE STANDARD / PRINTERS". Two windows carry painted legends reading "WILTS AND GLOUCESTERSHIRE STANDARD" and "ADVERTISEMENTS". An elaborately scrolled iron bracket supports a hanging shield-shaped sign painted with the paper's name. A shallow stone string marks the floor division above which the rest of the building is timber framed with oak framing and painted render infill panels.

The first and second floors each feature a central five-light mullioned and transomed oriel window carried on moulded brackets and projecting from the wall surface. The second floor is jettied, with the jetty beam decorated along its length with a row of Tudor roses and carried on moulded corbel brackets carved with cherubic heads. The eaves project further over the second-floor oriel window, which is similarly supported; above the window is a carved timber heraldic device with scrolls and the date 1904. The deep bargeboards are pierced and meet at a central spinial with carved pendant.

The returns and rear are constructed from squared limestone with larger limestone quoins. The rear roof slope contains a wide raking dormer with a metal-framed window. Rear windows in the original range feature chamfered mullioned and transomed casements. A two-storey extension added in 1990, faced in limestone rubble with an irregular shallow-pitched roof and multi-paned timber windows, is attached to the rear.

The interior of the main range comprises large rooms on each floor at the front, with the stair and ancillary rooms positioned to the rear. The ground floor features a ledged and braced entrance opening into a lobby clad in pine matchboarding with a floor tiled in polychrome mosaic bearing a cipher for W&GS in a scrolled cartouche. A wide, half-glazed door with Art Nouveau-influenced handles leads into the main ground-floor room, currently arranged as a reception area with mid to late 20th-century desk and fittings. This room, along with others in the main range, retains high moulded skirting boards and picture rails.

Behind the main ground-floor room lies the original stair hall. The stair is a closed-string dog-leg staircase with turned newels and balusters, featuring flattened ball finials to the newels and moulded pendants on the upper floors; it rises through all three storeys. A ledged and braced door provides access to the rear yard from the hall. Rooms and corridors throughout are fitted with moulded architraves and door casings; the panelled doors have brass doorknobs. The large oriel windows are slightly inset with extended internal cills each carried on a row of moulded corbel brackets and fitted with decorative wrought-iron window furniture.

The interior of the 1990s extension is plain with contemporary fixtures and finishes, with the exception of a double-doored glazed hatch that appears to have been relocated from the original reception area when an opening in that room's wall was significantly enlarged to allow direct public access.