National Westminster Bank

The National Westminster Bank was built around 1874 for the Lancaster Banking Company. It is a brick and ashlar sandstone building on a limestone plinth, with a graduated slate roof. The building is three storeys and an attic, with a 1:4:1 bay arrangement; the first bay is set back and has different floor levels.

The first bay has a rusticated ashlar ground floor and brickwork above. A rusticated ashlar doorcase contains panelled double doors, topped by an archivolt with carved spandrels and a modillioned pediment. Above the door is a central recess with paired sash windows to the first and second floors, featuring pilaster mullions, impost bands, and archivolts. A corbelled table sits beneath the eaves cornice. The parapet is pierced, with a central square-headed dormer featuring a cornice on brackets, ball finials, and a pediment raised on a panel with a carved rose. A mansard roof has a coped gable parapet on the left.

Bays 2 to 5 have an ashlar facade on a limestone plinth. A sill band and band-rusticated pilasters are located between the ground-floor sashes, which have recessed, segmentally-arched surrounds with keystones. There is an entablature with a Vitruvian scroll, and a 20th-century fascia sign beneath the cornice. The first floor has balustraded aprons and a moulded sill band to round-arched sashes set within aedicules with carved spandrels and dentilled cornices; the first-floor cornice also acts as a sill to the windows above. The second floor has paired windows within recesses between the pilasters, with round-arched sashes incorporating pilaster mullions, an impost string course and archivolts. A string course and four corbel tables are present beneath the straight cornice, which is surmounted by a balustraded parapet, with one die to each bay division. A mansard roof with dormers sits behind the parapet, and there are ashlar end stacks with offsets and bands.

The building was originally part of a planned scheme around Ramsden Square, the focal point of Barrow in Furness town centre. Buildings to the right of the bank were demolished, and were matched to numbers 121 and 123 Duke Street opposite, to create a formal entrance to Duke Street from Ramsden Square.