38 And 38A Bank Street

This building, located at 37 and 37A Bank Street, dates from the later 19th century and is a three-storey, two-bay, L-plan structure designed for retail use, with residential accommodation on the upper floors. It features segmental arched openings and prominent gabled upper windows that break the eaves. The exterior is constructed from coursed snecked and stugged blonde sandstone, with stugged and droved quoins and coursed whinstone rubble at the rear. There is a base course, a moulded string course at the first floor, and a band course that runs through to the adjacent building on the left. The eaves course is banded and has projecting corbel stops between the openings. The margins of the raised smooth arches have chamfered arises and stone cills. Some mid-20th century openings can be found at the rear.

The left side features a larger three-bay arcaded shopfront with a door flanked by timber-framed plate glass windows, while the right side has a two-bay arcaded shopfront with a part-glazed door and a timber plate glass window. The windows are 1-over-2-pane timber sash and case style, with vertical astragals on the lower sashes. The roofs are slate with a flat lead ridge section, stone skews, gableted skewputts, and chamfered corniced ashlar end stacks topped with octagonal clay cans. Decorative box profile cast-iron gutters run along the eaves band course between the windows, collecting to a lower gutter and cast-iron downpipe, with decorative square hoppers and wrought-iron finials. There is a former brick outside toilet at the rear.

Inside, there are 20th-century shop fittings, but the original rear stair leading to the upper floors remains, as the building was formerly a single dwelling. The interior features a good decorative scheme from the later 19th century, including a high-quality maple leaf cornice and ceiling rose in the principal room, along with ornate marble fire surrounds.