Albion Chambers and attached railings and gate

Summary

A complex of shops and legal chambers, constructed in 1833. The group is well-preserved, and demonstrates a high-quality commercial design of the early C19, with the additional interest of the fireproof construction of the separate office ranges.

Reasons for Designation

Albion Chambers, built in 1833 as suites of legal chambers and offices, with a pair of shops to the Small Street range, is listed at Grade II, for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as an imposing, well-handled composition with good Greek Revival-style details to the Small Street elevation;
* for the architectural interest of the restrained and refined detached chambers blocks, formally arranged around the courtyard to the rear of the Small Street shops, demonstrating an advanced design of fire-proof offices for the period.

Historic interest:

* for their continuous use as legal chambers since their construction.

Group value:

* with the other listed buildings of commerce and exchange in this important commercial enclave at the heart of Bristol city centre, including the adjacent Guildhall (Grade II*), former Bank of England immediately to the rear (Grade I), Bristol Commercial Rooms (Grade II*) and the former Exchange building (Grade I), which characterise this area.

History

Albion Chambers was constructed in 1833, as a complex of purpose-built offices, bonded cellars and shops in the commercial heart of Bristol. The buildings appear to have been built for, or first owned by, Mr John Langley, who defaulted on a mortgage of £8000 on the buildings in 1835. A notice in the Bristol Mirror on 13 June 1835, advertising Albion Chambers for sale by auction, clearly describes the site: the buildings ‘recently erected at considerable expense’ included two spacious shops to Small Street, along with 61 rooms arranged in various sets, with secure storage as part of each, and vaulted cellars below. The advertisement points out that the buildings were intended as offices for merchants and professionals, and praised their convenience due to their proximity to the city’s Commercial Rooms, Exchange and Post Office, all of which were only a few steps away. Albion Chambers were occupied by just the types of business anticipated; through the C19, occupants included several insurance firms, an auction house, a stockbroker and numbers of lawyers. In 1901, the whole complex was again offered for sale by auction, and a comprehensive list of tenants at that time reveals that the mix of occupiers had changed little: they included life and fire insurance companies, numbers of barristers and solicitors, a stockbroker offering instant trading on the London stock market via a dedicated telegraph service, an auctioneer, and a large firm of accountants. The shops on Small Street were at this time occupied by a clockmaker and a hairdresser.

Between 1843 and 1847, a branch of the Bank of England, designed by CR Cockerell (listed Grade I; National Heritage List for England (NHLE) entry 1282404), was built on Broad Street, parallel with Small Street. The three-bay front of the bank incorporates as part of its structure a narrow bay on its south side with a ground-floor passageway providing pedestrian access to the rear of Albion Chambers. This passageway and the building above it is therefore included within the listing for the former bank.

Albion Chambers remains (2025) in part in use as legal chambers, with shops continuing to occupy the the Small Street units.

Details

Offices, with shops to the Small Street front, constructed in 1833.

MATERIALS: brick with limestone dressings and lateral stacks, stuccoed courtyard blocks with brick ridge stacks and hipped pantile roofs.

PLAN: four double-depth blocks arranged symmetrically to the sides of a T-shaped courtyard.

EXTERIOR: the symmetrical Small Street elevation is of four storeys and five bays with cornice and ashlar parapet. Its details are in the Greek Revival style. The ground-floor shop fronts have an arch to a through passage; the archway has a moulded archivolt with outer moulding of palmettes, a shell-like fanlight panel containing an acroterion above the lintel, and panelled jambs, repeated at the ends of the shop fronts with plate-glass windows. The windows above have plate-glass sashes in architraves, which are eared and battered with cornices and ashlar aprons on the first floor, with a central eared square window, and battered on the second floor. The left return at ground floor is of random limestone ashlar in the manner of the neighbouring former Assizes, and was rebuilt between 1865 and 1870 to enclose the space in front of it.

The courtyard behind has matching blocks facing across the sides, and a third across the end, with a through passage to Broad Street. Each office block is of three storeys; they are five-window ranges, each with a coped parapet, the side pair with an eared, battered architrave and six-panelled doors, that to the east end with an eared, segmental-arched architrave and large keystone to the passage, small end windows with raised surrounds, with curved, wrought-iron brackets to a lamp over the doorway, and a clock over the first-floor window set in an ornate square panel; eight-over-eight-pane sashes with fine bars, some replaced with horned and plate-glass sashes.

INTERIOR: the Small Street block has an entrance in the right-hand side of the passage; details include a stone cantilevered oval open-well winder stair, with wrought-iron railings, and floors of stone laid on iron I-section beams; second-floor fire surround with panelled jambs and mantle to roundels; brick groin vaults in basement. The two side blocks have similar open dogleg stairs, and the eastern block has an open-well stair above the western entrance; panelled reveals to six-panelled doors.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: attached cast-iron spear-headed railings and gate with palmette finials to the basement steps in the north end of the courtyard.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

380559

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Foyle, A, Pevsner Architectural Guides: Bristol, (2004), 119
Gomme, A H, Jenner, M, Little, B D G, Bristol, An Architectural History, (1979), 252

End of official list entry

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