Listed Building: OLD BANK BUILDINGS (1375795)

CHESTER CITY (EM) SJ4066 FOREGATE STREET 1932-1/6/100 (South side) 10/01/72 Nos.2, 4 AND 6 Old Bank Buildings GV II Shops and offices. 1895. By TM Lockwood. Timber-framed to front and to City Walls, white glazed brick to light-well and rear; brown tile roof. EXTERIOR: cellars and 3 storeys; 2 bays, narrower covered entrance bay and one bay. Arcaded ground floor has end-post left, intermediate posts and timber bracket to Eastgate, right. The posts probably conceal stanchions; plinths and capitals with vase-balusters to front and brackets to bressumer. 2 modern shopfronts left of basket-arched entry, one shopfront to right. Shallow first-floor jetty has running vine carved on fascia. The first floor is close-studded; three 6-light mullioned and transomed windows, the central 4 lights of each forming a bowed or canted oriel on carved brackets, 2 in the form of dragons. The close-studded second floor has bold jetty on 6 dragon-brackets; 2 mullioned and transomed oriels, left and centre, with broad central lights round-topped; right bay has composite casement in form of a cross-window to each side of a Palladian window; all glazing is leaded. The 2 left bays have close-studded front gables; eaves have exposed rafters to entrance bay and right bay. The left end of the arcade is open, with the storeys above close-studded; the corner turret is timber-framed with a copper cupola roof (a common feature of Lockwood's designs) with tall finial. The right end of the City Walls has a stone-dressed flush plinth of hard red brick, small framing to the gable-ends against the Wall, 2 stone-dressed shaped brick chimneys, rainwater pipe and head. Behind the gables a square light-well of white brick has leaded mullioned and mullioned and transomed windows; a tall square chimney at back left corner; close-studded second floor; close-studded gable to wing behind light-well; a lower close-studded wing extends to the Wall, with a 15-panel basket-arched oak door. A 2-storey wing of brick to rear has hipped roof; 3 stone-dressed chimneys towards rear. INTERIOR: generally simply finished, but has a broad open-well stair with ornate cast-iron balustrade to first floor and simpler expression above. (The Buildings of England: Pevsner N & Hubbard E: Cheshire: Harmondsworth: 1971-: 165). Listing NGR: SJ4072766332