87333

 

II  

Designated  

30/12/2005  

30/12/2005  

HSBC Bank  

 

Denbighshire  

Ruthin  

Ruthin  

St Peter's Square  

312399  

358285  

 

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

 

 

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

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 not inspected.  

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.