Description

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 12 November 2021 to update text and reformat to current standards

SP 0787 SW
30/3

City Centre
CORPORATION STREET (west side) B2
Victoria Law Courts

21.1.70

GV
I

1887-91 and won in competition by Sir Aston Webb and Ingress Bell. Red brick and terracotta; green stone tiled roof. Mostly two storeys; the main facade with a symmetrical centrepiece plus, on the left, a long wing essentially L-shaped and with two gables, one faced with a bow window, the other with a tall narrow bay with concave-sided gable and, on the right, a gabled bay. Everywhere elaborate detailing executed by Aumonier from the architects' designs. The centrepiece with central porch with richly decorated gabled and flanking turrets and, either side, four single-storeyed bays with cross-windows and big octagonal towers with pointed caps.

Above and behind this stands the Great Hall with steeply-sloping balustraded and crested roof and centrally-placed gabled clock stage. Good Arts and Crafts detail with figure sculpture by Harry Bates and Walter Crane. Inside, the Great Hall is a completely symmetrical room five bays by three. The round-headed windows are of three-lights with one transom on the long sides and of five lights with two transoms on the short sides. All have panel-type tracery and the roof is of hammerbeam construction. Despite this, the rich and strong detail, now in sand-coloured terracotta, is of a Spanish Plateresque kind. Between the windows are empty niches with their bases supported by very pretty putti.

Left and right are passages with stilted arches carrying first floor balconied passages, straight ahead a sumptuously ornate arch with concave-sided gable like the arch into the hall. A shallow tunnel-vaulted and richly-pannelled passage leads to the courtrooms beyond. Stained glass designed by Walter Lonsdale; five enormous crown-like chandeliers of excellent design. The courts themselves all with good joinery and fittings, modest in the smaller courts like Nos 1 and 3, grander in the larger ones like Nos 5 and 6 which have elaborately canopied judges' chairs and originally, as still in No 5 court, a Tudor-type ceiling with pendant bosses.

Listing NGR: SP0731387308

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Victoria Law Courts at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q7926830

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

• 
  Somerset: North and Bristol: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Development and Design of Heritage Sensitive Sites: Strategies for Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas
• 
  Essex: Buildings of England Series (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Period property manual, victorian house manual 2 books collection set by ian rock
• 
  Georgian Style and Design for Contemporary Living
• 
  Specifications for Building Conservation: Volume 1: External Structure: Practical Examples v. 2