Description

MANVERS STREET
(East side)

Bayntun's Bookshop
05/08/75

GV II

Former Post Office sorting office, now bookshop and book-bindery, with reading room, and attached workshop and store. 1901, possibly by FW Gardiner, or the Office of Works.
MATERIALS: Limestone ashlar main and yellow brick rear range, plain tile roof to front range, slate to workshop. Broad span gabled range in Jacobean style, with four narrow face gables, and with service throughway to left, now enclosed, attached behind, at right angles, workshop, on two floors, very broad industrial shed, with access from service road.
EXTERIOR: Main front, two storeys with basement, narrow slit in each gable, above two-light casements with stone recessed ovolo mould mullion and transom and leaded upper lights. Ground floor has wide round arched openings with small drip courses to stops, bays one and three have hardwood casements in three lights with leading above transom, to deep splayed stone sills. Central bay has large fanlight with double radial bars, above concave recessed side display windows with glazing bars, and glazed doors, all to sandstone landing on two+one steps. Bay to right, slightly set back, has flight of three+one sandstone steps to landing, splayed recessed lights with glazed doors under fanlight. To far left, similarly set back, one storey bay with arched opening under drip course with slight ogee top and finial, in splayed jambs, containing glazed doors under transom lights and fanlight with rectangular glazing. Above ground floor arches moulded drip course, under broad band to further course forming sill band, and continued as parapet coping to first bay. Basement has three large three-light wood casements under broad segmental heads. Left return gable and front gables have saddle back shouldered copings, square ashlar end stacks, with triple octagonal shafts, left, and double shafts, right. Left return has two-light window at first floor, matching front, and stack external. Five original downpipes with cleats, under square hoppers and short runs of ogee guttering. Central to ridge octagonal louvered ventilator with tile skirt and leaded spire. Rear elevation very broad main gable and second smaller gable to right, in brick walling, with oculus above three wide industrial casements and door with deep transom light on external industrial steel staircase, lower ground floor level are three wide segmental arches over two windows and a pair of wide plank doors, and smaller bay has two lights above wide garage door to steel lintel. Small external stack off corbel, to right of oculus, and further brick stack to rear of front range.
INTERIOR: Not inspected.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: Across main front bold cast iron railings, with doubled and embellished bottom-rail, on stone curb, in two-bays each side of centre, returned at left end and to central doorway. Far left end is heavy square pier, and to right hand end smaller piers framing second entrance, with returned lengths of iron railing. Original pairs of gates remain opposite each entrance.
HISTORY: This Cotswold-influenced front forms a bold statement of Edwardian retail confidence, and is among the least altered shop fronts left in the city.

Listing NGR: ST7526964421

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Bayntun's Bookshop official website
• Wikidata Q26688922

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

• 
  Listed Buildings, Conservation Areas and Monuments
• 
  London 6: Westminster (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England): Westminster v. 6
• 
  Cornwall (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Somerset: North and Bristol: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Dorset (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  A Buying and Owning a Listed Building: A Brief Guide