Description

1.
5111 VICAR LANE BD1
(south-east side)

No 62
(Devere House)
SE 1633 SE 37/1150

II* GV

2.
Includes No 1 Aked Street. Built in 1871 as an American and Chinese Export
Warehouse. Architects Lockwood and Mawson and, with No 63 opposite, their
major incursion into the precinct which is otherwise dominated by Eli Milnes.
No 62 is a grand commercial palazzo with richly modelled yet carefully
proportioned elevations, forming a corner block with Aked Street. Tall dressed
sandstone "brick" elevations with ashlar dressings of 5 graded storeys. Seven bays
to Vicar Lane, one to splayed corner and 2 to Aked Street with No 1 extending the
block in plainer style. The ground floor is arcaded. The piers have battered
moulded bases treated as plinth with vermiculated courses, Greek key bands and
weathered capping string. Similar string at impost level. Vermiculated console
keystones. Blind basement windows with console keys supporting window sills
above. Console bracket cornice over ground floor serving as sill course to
first floor which is treated as piano nobile. The close set windows have blind
baluster panels below sills and are flanked by panelled foliate capped pilasters
supporting archivolt arches, carved spandrels and modillioned pediments over.
Dentilled sill course to second floor with arcaded windows linked by acanthus
leaf impost string, carved tympani, archivolt arches. Similar details to
third floor with incised roundels to spandrels. The fourth floor windows have
segmental arched eared architrave surrounds. Bed mould to carved console
brackets supporting projecting eaves cornice. Office entrance on corner,
elaborately decorated with flanking panels carved with vine leaves and surmounted
by massive consoles supporting large segmental pediment with carved scrollwork.
This surround contains the door proper, flanked by Corinthian columns, large
vermiculated voussoirs to blind tympanum containing a boldly carved eagle;
festoons are carried across from the consoles of the surround. The waggonway
is contained in the wider end bay of the ground floor arcade. The blind basement
windows are screened by fine wrought iron grilles of wheel and scroll pattern.
Inside, behind corner entrance is the stairwell, octagonal in plan with moulded
soffits to treads, cast iron columnar banisters and swept and ramped handrail.

Listing NGR: SE1677833098

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17534801

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Georgian Style and Design for Contemporary Living
• 
  Staffordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Bristol (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)
• 
  Yorkshire West Riding: Leeds, Bradford and the North (Pevsner Architectural Guides / Buildings of England)
• 
  Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East: Norwich and North-east v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  [(Cumberland and Westmorland)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1967)