Former London & County Bank

Details

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 31 August 2023 to amend the name and address and to reformat the text to current standards

TQ3104SW
577-1/40/662

BRIGHTON
PAVILION BUILDINGS (East side)
Nos.8-11 (Consecutive)

(Formerly listed as National Westminster Bank)

23/06/94

GV
II

Bank. 1905 by Godfrey Pinkerton for the London & County Bank.
Buff sandstone with dressings of red sandstone, roof obscured by parapet.

EXTERIOR: four storeys; five windows to the west front, two to the south, and one in the entrance bay to the corner, which is set back in a shallow curve. The details are derived partly from the Italian Renaissance and partly from the Greek Revival. Ground floor decorated with broad, slightly projecting bands of fluted red sandstone, with pilasters between openings. Flat-arched entrance with elaborately carved architrave, cornice and scrolled pediment set between antae whose faces are carved with scrolling foliage, and entablature with putti holding shields; panelled double doors of original design. Flat-arched office entrance to north under a coved round arch with panelled architrave, entablature, panelled archivolt, foliate keystone and fanlight as tympanum; panelled door, the upper panel having an iron grille of Italian Renaissance design.

All windows flat-arched, those to the ground floor with panelled architraves and bracketed pediments in the Greek taste; the windows have tripartite glazing with one transom, the lower part having slim metal columns standing in front of each of the mullions, and each crowned by an exaggeratedly coved cornice with antefixae; these have been shortened at the base on the two northernmost windows; entablature to ground floor, the cornice of which supports balconies to the first-floor windows. The first and second floors over the entrance have one window each, forming a single composition the first-floor window is tripartite, the outer lights with architraves, and the whole flanked by panels of scrolling foliage, the central light under an open pediment filled with festoons, and so broadly Palladian; over the pediment, a flat-arched window with egg-and-dart moulding to architrave, and consoles, flanked by emblematic figures carved in low relief, Navigation, apparently, to the left, and perhaps Industry to the right.

The first-floor windows on the south front are flanked by panels of scrolling foliage with segmental pediments over; on the west front there are three windows of this design, alternating with two having architrave and cornice only; second-floor windows on both of these fronts flat-arched with architraves; elaborate entablature with triglyph frieze having paterae and emblems between, and mutule cornice. In the attic storey the entrance bay is set back further behind a screen of paired antae; other windows flanked by Doric pilasters but with unmoulded lintels and sashes of original design; the spaces between them panelled. Balustrade over entrance bay flanked by panelled and corniced stacks, parapet to the rest, panelled and corniced stacks.

INTERIOR: the banking hall has a floor of black and white marble, columns and pilasters of neo-Classical design, and panelled ceiling with egg- and-dart mouldings; flat-arched entrance at north end in shallow curved recess with pilasters, archivolt and decoration to the tympanum in the Adam style; lobby to corner entrance, dado and counter panelled in oak and ebony, the counter also distinctively enriched with inlays.

(Carder T: The Encyclopaedia of Brighton: Lewes: 1990-).

Listing NGR: TQ3122804132

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

481032

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Carder, T, Encyclopaedia of Brighton, (1990)

End of official list entry

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