HSBC Bank

Cadw's description

Location

Located on the corner of St Peter's Square and Market Street, the entrance facing SW.

History

Midland Bank built in 1925 by T M Alexander of Woolfall & Eccles, architects.

Exterior

On a corner site with canted angle containing entrance. Timber-framed, neo-vernacular style. Symmetrical S and W sides, except for a lower narrower bay adjoining R end. Single-storey with attic. Timber-framed on a high brick ponth with stone dressings; hipped swept slate-covered roofs with external brick stack to R end with a pair of tall barley twist shafts with corbelled caps. Sill detail including rusticated quoins, plinth, dressed stone jambs to entrance, moulded sill band. Timber work above is close-studded, the posts articulating the windows, doorway and angles of the building; each post bears a pinnacle with crockets. Continuous wooden fascia above windows (bearing name of bank), with shields flanking entrance; moulded coved eaves cornice, the lower moulding decorated with foliage, birds and animals. Entrance across angle has a moulded 4-centred-arched head with decorated spandrels; plain wooden tympanum above. Small lobby inside entrance with a pair of panelled doors at right angles, half-glazed with quarries. The windows are 2-light wooden casements with quarry glazing, each light with a traceried trefoiled head. The W front has a pair of windows to centre flanked by windows. The S front has the same arrangement. The attic is lit by large gabled half-dormers to the centres of the W and S sides. These have paired 2-light windows, as below, and are jettied on brackets, the bressumers decorated with cornucopia; barge boards with similar decoration and finials. The R-hand bay of the S front is slightly set back with a lower ridge height and wide boarded eaves; it contains a 3-light window as elsewhere; attic has a hipped half-dormer with plain 3-light window with quarries. E gable end is half-timbered to L of stack; brick to R of stack including 3 small windows with sandstone lintels, not aligned, to basement, ground floor and attic. To R and set back, wider gable end of main range, of brick, with 1 window to each storey.

Interior

Interior not inspected.

Reason for designation

Listed as an unusually well-detailed purpose-built bank in a timber-framed neo-vernacular style; carefully designed for its prominent corner site in the square, and having group value with other buildings and monuments in St Peter's Square.