Midland Bank

Cadw's description

Location

On a corner site at the cross roads between Wellington Road, High Street, and Bodfor Street, prominently sited opposite the town hall.

History

Built 1899-1901 by J Francis Doyle architect, or Liverpool, for the North and South Wales Bank, replacing an earlier bank building on the site. The North and South Wales Bank amalgamated with the Midland Bank in 1908.

Exterior

Free-classical style, faced in red brick with freestone dressings and channelled ashlar to ground floor; green slate roof rounded across corner, with brick chimney stacks. 3 storeys, 2-bay elevation to Wellington Road, distinctive 1-window rounded corner housing main entrance, and 5-bay elevation to Bodfor Street. Both main elevations have round arched cavetto moulded openings, with dropped keystones and timber glazing of standard banking hall type to ground floor. At the extreme left on Bodfor Street is a secondary entrance with architrave, panelled doors and keystone linking with cornice at base of surround to oculus overlight 20 and 16-pane sash windows above, in shouldered architraves, scrolled and with festoons to first floor, and with tall keystones to 2nd floor. Main entrance is across angle beneath scallop shell hood carried on brackets, with granite doorcase with Ionic columns and keystone. The 1st and 2nd floors of the corner are recessed with Ionic giant order columns and square pies as responds. First floor window above detailed as the rest, but tripartite window to second floor. Both have curved glazing. Quoins, sill and lintel bands mark the division between 1st and 2nd floors, and the ground floor has impost band and high plinth. Balustraded parapet and dentilled cornice. Banking hall modernised.

Reason for designation

An excellent example of a purpose-designed bank using a rich and sophisticated interpretation of the free-classical style favoured for commerical building at the turn of the century.