Crown Courts

Details

GLOUCESTER

SO8218NE BEARLAND 844-1/7/8 (North side) 23/01/52 Crown Courts (Formerly Listed as: WESTGATE STREET (South side) Shire Hall)

II

Assize, quarter session and county courts, now crown courts. 1816, with C20 alterations. By Sir Robert Smirke for the county magistrates in conjunction with the building of the Shire Hall, Westgate Street (qv). Ashlar, slate roof. Severe Classical style. PLAN: an axial block comprising two full height, semicircular court rooms both backing onto central suites of judges' chambers and service rooms, all enclosed within an ambulatory corridor at ground-floor level; the entrance passage from the Shire Hall leads into the corridor at the north end of the main north-south axis. At the south end on the axis an entrance porch containing steps rises to the level of the corridor; the porch projects from the block between flanking porters' rooms; above the corridor a semicircular public gallery to each court room reached by stairs at either end; in the basement cells and offices. EXTERIOR: facing Bearland the symmetrical, apsidal end of the main block is a polygon of nine equal facets in two storeys expressing the ambulatory corridor at ground-floor level, and the tall gallery to the southern court room above; a raised band at the gallery-floor level and a band below the shallow coped parapet; in the centre the single-storey, projecting entrance porch and the flanking porters' rooms, all with a continuous cornice at the same level as the raised band at the gallery-floor level on the main block. On the porch above the cornice a shallow parapet and on each of the flanking rooms a taller parapet or blind attic capped by a cornice with blocking course; in the front wall of the porch the entrance doorway, approached by two stone steps, is a large, plain, semicircular arched opening enclosing wooden fanlight with radiating glazing bars, double, fielded panel doors between similar fixed side panels. On the front of each of the porter's rooms a sash with glazing bars (3x4 panes), and on the ground floor in each facet of the main block a sash with glazing bars (3x4 panes) lighting the corridor; on the first floor in the central facet and in each

alternate facet an arched window with glazing bars (4x5 panes) with a central side hung casement and radiating bars in the head, in each of the other facets a blind, plain semicircular niche of similar size; the exterior of the northern polygonal end of the main block has similar details. C20 single storey additions on the west side of the block are not of special interest. INTERIOR: southern court room with judge's bench raised within a wide, segmental-arched recess, the soffit of the arch coffered. In the curved face of the wall behind the gallery niches alternate with the windows. Generally all the fittings renewed in early C20. The north courtroom not inspected. A good example of the more developed form of courtroom plan, with separate courtrooms and hall. (BOE: Verey D: Gloucestershire: The Vale and the Forest of Dean: London: 1976-: 239; VCH: The City of Gloucester: Oxford: 1988-: 249).





Listing NGR: SO8294718641

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

472088

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Verey, D, The Buildings of England: Gloucestershire 2 The Vale and The Forest of Dean, (1970), 239
Page, W, The Victoria History of the County of Gloucester, (1988), 249

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