Description

This list entry was subject to a Minor Enhancement on 04/06/2018

ST5773SE
901-1/9/959

BRISTOL
Clifton
QUEEN'S ROAD (North east side)
Victoria Rooms and attached railings and gates

(Formerly Listed as: QUEENS ROAD (North side) Victoria Rooms)

08/01/59

GV
II*
Assembly and concert hall. 1839-41. By Charles Dyer. Carving by Jabez Tyler. Limestone ashlar, slate roof. Open plan. French Neoclassical style.
Two storeys; six-window range. A fine and wide symmetrical front has a large octastyle Corinthian portico two bays deep, to a frieze, modillion cornice and pediment with a carving of 'Dawn' in the tympanum, and CHARLES DYER, ARCHITECT 1840 inscribed to the left. Flanking wings have paired Corinthian pilasters to a frieze and modillion cornice, with two blind windows with architraves and console cornices, linked by a full-width sill band. Recessed centre has a massive doorway with battered architrave with bronze medallions and a console cornice, plate-glass overlight and metal grille, to two-leaf C20 door, and smaller doorways each side. The returns have a five-window section with architraves and console cornices to windows with mid C20 glazing bars and a sill band, and plain basement windows, and a rear section with a raised hexastyle-in-antis attached Corinthian portico, frieze and cornice, and attic in three sections, the middle one raised and set back with patterned panels; blind windows between. The left return has a mid C20 porch with deep convex jambs, the right return has a large mid C20 single-storey extension.

INTERIOR: extensively remodelled c1950; central full-height Octagon with a balcony of bowed cast-iron railings and Doric columns to the drum below a domed ceiling, the Regency Room has period plaster decoration and a rear gallery with decorative panels of musical instruments.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: attached cast-iron railings between alternate columns of portico have urn finials and diagonal bars, and wrought-iron gates to right-hand entrance with leaves and raised centre.

Described by Pevsner as '...a first classic example of the turn from the neo-classical to the style which was at the same time adopted in Paris by the Ecole des Beaux Arts'. Burnt internally in the 1930s and reconstructed by GD Blake and EH Button. A key building in Bristol on a prominent intersection.

HISTORICAL NOTE: The Victoria Rooms played an important part in the local campaign for women’s suffrage. Bristol had a thriving branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the militant suffrage organisation founded in Manchester by Emmeline Pankhurst in 1903. The Union used the Victoria Rooms for its regular ‘At Home’ meetings from 1908. The building also hosted large public meetings featuring national suffragette speakers including Emmeline Pankhurst, Christabel Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethick Lawrence. The WSPU’s use of militancy was controversial and its meetings were often targeted by groups of young men intent on disruption. In 1908 the Union employed professional boxers to keep medical students from interrupting Mrs Pankhurst’s speech at the Victoria Rooms.

This list entry was amended in 2018 as part of the centenary commemorations of the 1918 Representation of the People Act.

Listing NGR: ST5772473456

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17552655

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

• 
  Cumbria: Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Sussex: East with Brighton and Hove (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Northamptonshire: Buildings of England Series (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Old House Eco Handbook: A Practical Guide to Retrofitting for Energy-Efficiency & Sustainability
• 
  England's Post-War Listed Buildings
• 
  Oxfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)