Castle Chambers

Castle Chambers is a pair of three-storey shops with offices above, located at 4-4a Palace Street. Each shop features a two-window range and is constructed with scribed stucco and a slate roof, which has bracketed eaves. The buildings have a central brick stack and a rendered stack to the right. Both shops retain elements of their 19th-century fronts, framed by pilasters that are brick on the lower half and rendered on the upper half, above a central raised field.

The fascia has gabled end-brackets with fretwork ornament above moulded consoles, although the left-hand end console is missing. The shop at 4a has a deep dentil cornice visible behind an added fascia. Shop 4 also retains its original fascia behind the current one, though the details are obscured. Shop 4a features a plate glass shop window with turned mahogany posts that are arched at the top, adorned with spandrels in relief foliage, and a plain stallboard. The central recessed doorway and the doorway at the left end both have overlights, with a half-lit panelled door for the shop and a panelled door for the upper storeys.

Shop 4 has panelled doors with a raised field in the lower panel, also under overlights, with a two-light shop window between. The middle storey has four-pane sash windows with moulded architraves, connected by a rich band decorated with relief foliage. The upper storey features a sill band, with four-pane sash windows for shop 4a and two-pane sash windows for shop 4.

At the rear of 4a Palace Street, there is a wall bounding the yard, which consists of a series of three high arches supported by slender piers. The wall is made of roughly squared stonework, including voussoirs for the arches, and shows traces of lime-wash or render. The fair face of the wall faces away from Palace Street, while the inner face of the piers facing the yard is roughly toothed, suggesting that there were originally a series of vaulted passageways leading to a rear yard or garden.