Former Bank and Bank Manager's House, Wakefield North, Wakefield

Summary

Former bank and bank manager's house, of 1881, by James Neill & Son for Leatham, Tew and Company with C20 and C21 alterations, now converted for use as a restaurant and bar with residential flats above. Queen Anne Revival style.

Description

Former bank and bank manager's house. 1881 by James Neill & Son for Leatham, Tew and Company; with C20 and C21 alterations. Now restaurant and flats. Queen Anne Revival style.

MATERIALS: red brick with Idle stone dressings and stained and embossed glass windows. Westmorland slate roof with internal guttering and inset cast-iron downpipes.

PLAN: rectangular on plan under a split-level mansard roof with a rectangular flat-roof early-C20 extension to the north.

EXTERIOR: The front (north-west) two-storey elevation, with basement and attic, is of eleven asymmetrical bays with three dormers. The left-hand six bays form the original bank and the right-hand five bays form the original bank manager’s house. It is built in brick with stone dressings to the plinth, string bands, window surrounds and balustraded parapets. The elevations are enriched with carved and moulded brick and stone detailing. The balustrading has brick end plinths and carved finials. The windows to both are predominantly two-light casements with toplights, some of which retain timber glazing bars, leaded painted and embossed stained glass.

The bank's Wood Street elevation is asymetric. It has a carved stone doorcase in the second bay with a pair of tapered Renaissance style pilasters, with ionic capitals, resting on side-scroll bases and supporting a decorated and moulded consoled entablature and pediment. It contains a C21 panelled two-leaf entrance door with a painted fanlight with moulded frame and keystone. A single bay to the left and four bays to the right contain eared and shouldered window surrounds with side-scrolled and consoled entablatures (with a fluted and floral frieze) and moulded triangular pediments. A moulded string band forms the window sills and a reeded and moulded band runs between the window toplights. The fourth and fifth bay window entablatures contain the dates ‘1809’ / ‘1881’. The first floor has six matching windows with a moulded and dentillated cornice forming the window sills, with brick aprons below, moulded stone frames and a small scrolled pediment with enriched shell antefixes to each window. Brick pilasters rise through the second and fourth bays to two pedimented gabled dormer windows, terminating with stone caps and ball finials.

The architecture of the bank manager’s house matches that of the bank, with some variation in detailing, but is smaller in scale. It has a symetrical elevation with a central doorcase with a pair of ornamented square tapered pilasters supporting moulded consoles, an entablature and an elaborate corbelled terracotta door hood enriched with acanthus leaves, beneath a moulded and dentillated cornice. It contains an early-C20 wood panelled two-leaf entrance door beneath a panelled stone door lintel and margined painted glass overlight. Either side are two windows with moulded stone frames and shallow triangular pediments with small round floral motifs. The first floor has five windows rising from the dentillated and moulded cornice, with shaped brick aprons below and moulded stone frames, each enriched with a floral motif. The central bay has a pair of brick pilasters rising to a pedimented dormer which has a round-headed window, stylised side scrolls and an enriched terracotta entablature.

Attached to the west end of the bank manager's house is a mid-C20 single-storey red brick extension with similar stone dressings and a roof garden above.

The three-bay left (south-east) return has a canted left-hand bay in alignment with Silver Street and stylistically matches the bank’s front elevation. New brickwork below the central ground-floor window marks the position of an infilled C20 doorway. Between the second and third bays a pair of decorated and moulded stone and brick pilasters rise from the reeded string band to a stone chimney stack. The first floor between has an ornamented terracotta plaque with a consoled entablature and swan-neck pediment above an engraved stone sun dial. The chimney stack has fluted, dentillated and ball moulded stone work and attached to its face is an eared and shouldered stone plaque with carved garlands and foliage around a circular monogram panel engraved with the letters ‘L T & Co’. Above the plaque is a dentillated and consoled entablature (with the dates 1809-1881) and a moulded triangular pediment. The balustraded parapet returns from the front elevation.

The rear (south-west) elevation faces the George and Crown Yard and its four south-east bays form the bank. The two southern bays stylistically match the front elevation but with a blind ground floor and two first-floor windows. Directly to the left the stone capped elevation is set-back, supported by a low canted stone capped wall, and it has two stone quoined ground-floor banking hall windows (boarded – 2021), each sharing a stone pilaster jamb with sills supported on small stone brackets. Above is a group of three segmental arched window surrounds (with stone sills and lintels), comprising a window of two one-over-one sashes with flanking narrow one-over-one sashes. To the right is a similar group of two windows and between them is a shaped dutch gable with a shortened chimney stack. The bank manager’s house has a wide C21 glazed entrance and western two-pane window all set within a C21 pilaster shop front and to the left a C21 apartment door. Its first floor has a keystone arched stair window with a brick roll-moulded surround, a stone lintel and hoodmould and margin framed embossed glass window. To its right is a segmental arched window with a similar surround and one-over-one sash. A shaped dutch gable with chimney stack rises between them.

The right (north-west) return comprises the single-storey ground-floor C20 brick extension which adjoins number 5 Wood Street. The building’s first-floor windows are concealed behind a roof garden. An ornamented external brick chimney rises to a stone pedimented stack with an adjacent late-C20 flat-roof attic dormer.

INTERIOR: the bank entrance retains a mosaic wall panel with the text 'L T & Co / 1809' set in a circular and octagonal frame and a painted glass fanlight with a decorative fretwork grill. The wall between the C19 public entrance and the partners' lobby beyond has been removed but the extent of the public entrance is defined by a coffered ceiling with a dentillated and moulded cornice with a floral frieze and corner stops, and a central ceiling rose. To the rear of the former partners' lobby are a late-C20 elevator and adjacent staircase, which rises to the first floor. The former partners' room in the east corner has late-C19 moulded window surrounds and a similar coffered ceiling and cornice as the adjacent public entrance. The south-east corner chimney breast has been partially punched through with a late-C20 doorway into the former consulting room, now utilitarian restroom and lavatory.

The ground-floor banking hall (now restaurant – 2021) is of two dates. The width of the original C19 banking hall is marked by four large windows with moulded surrounds facing Wood Street. These are flanked by early-C20 neo-Greek pilasters and moulded capitals either side. A separate strong room has a Chubb and Sons safe door in the southern corner. The original north-west wall has been opened up, supported on Doric columns and pilasters, to extend the neoclassical early-C20 banking floor into the former bank manager’s house. The C19 former banking hall has an inserted (2021) dropped and coffered ceiling and early-C21 ornamental wall plaques. The early-C20 extension into the bank manager's house has an early-C20 moulded and dentillated square coffered ceiling with a metope and triglyph wall frieze to the east and west walls. The former house entrance at the northern end of the room forms an entrance from Wood Street. A wide C21 glazed entrance has been inserted from the George and Crown Yard. The north-west cross wall has three doorways to ancillary spaces and C21 kitchen, which extends into the C20 utilitarian single-storey extension.
The basement stair accesses an early-C20 basement vaults (bullion room) of two reinforced concrete strong rooms with glazed tiles. Three substantial safe doors by Chubb and Sons and Thompsons remain in situ alongside other late-C20 bank doors. It is now (2021) used as a restaurant and a kitchen, with utilitarian lavatories and store cupboards.

The first floor is now divided into offices at the southern end and four apartments accessed from the original spine corridor (now partitioned by safety and security doors). The south corner room (former ledger room) remains whilst the former drawing room in the east corner is subdivided (2021) as an office and store room. The office is accessed through a C20 doorway punched through the C19 firebreast and has a wide alcove. The corresponding alcove in the store room has been infilled with a C21 stud wall and a door. The spine corridor retains a C19 wide arched stair bridging the varying floor levels between the bank and bank manager’s house and there are two flats above and below the stair. The corridor has been extended to the full length of the building and at its northern end is an elevator, store cupboard, L-shaped stair down to the external apartment entrance (onto the George and Crown Yard) and a straight stair up to the attic. Contiguous to the central C19 corridor stair, is a C21 attic stair to an attic flat and store rooms. All the visible first-floor windows (2021) have moulded window surrounds.

The attic is divided into a flat, adjoining L-shaped corridor and store room, and two large attic store rooms with late-C20 banking doors, square cut mansard roof timbers, two late-C20 elevator motor rooms and an eastern access hatch to the roof parapet.

History

The Leatham, Tew and Company bank was founded in 1801 in Pontefract by John Leatham, James Jackson, Thomas William Tew, and Edward Trueman and traded as Leatham Tew and Company from 1834, although it was generally known as the West Riding Bank. Operating from Wood Street in Wakefield in 1809 the bank also purchased the failing banking firm of Ingram & Kennet who had purpose-built banking premises at 65 Westgate.

The current bank and bank manager's house at 1-3 Wood Street was built around 1881 and was designed by James Neill and Son of Leeds, a surveying and architectural practice established by James Neill Senior (1819-1866) and later taken over by his second son Archibald Neill (1856-1933) and renamed in 1882. Archibald Neil trained under the Leeds architect William Hill and designed and supervised the erection of banks, churches, commercial buildings, and speculative terraced housing and housing estates. He went on to design the Leatham, Tew and Company bank in Goole and further buildings for Thomas William Tew.

The Wood Street bank was opened on Monday 26 September 1881 with newspaper articles providing a detailed list of the contractors and suppliers involved with the bank’s construction, as well as describing the external and internal layout. The stone and wood carving was by John Wormald Appleyard of Leeds and the stained and embossed glass-work executed by Thompson and Dalton of Leeds. The C19 bank originally comprised a small public entrance on Wood Street that gave access south-west to the partners' lobby and north-west to the banking hall. The partners' lobby had its own separate grander entrance into the banking hall alongside doors to the partners' and consulting room and a staircase leading to a first-floor old-ledger room and partners' lavatories. The banking hall was designed with carved old English oak fittings, a panelled and pendent ceiling, a strong room, a clerk's room and a private bank manager's passage from the adjacent house. The double-pile bank manager's house (west) had a central hall and a rear central staircase and its first-floor corridor and rooms extended above the bank. It had a servants' back stair at the west end of the building and service rooms in the basement.

Leatham Tew and Company was merged and incorporated with the rapidly expanding Barclays Bank in 1906, and in 1923 the Westgate branch of Barclays was closed and its accounts moved to Wood Street. In the late 1930s the bank interior was substantially remodelled and secure vaults, of two strong rooms, were inserted into the basement of the bank manager's house and a neo-Greek style open-plan banking floor created across the former banking hall and ground floor of the bank manager's house, (with office rooms to the south-east and north-west). A separate public entrance was inserted in the second bay of the south-east elevation (now infilled) and a stair inserted to the retained first-floor corridor, with the rooms let to businesses.
Further bank alterations were undertaken around 1976, with the insertion of elevators, motor rooms, and an ATM in a single-storey, mid-C20 extension, and in 1987 the bank was refurbished. Barclays remained in residence until 2012 when it moved to Trinity Walk premises. The building was subsequently adapted as a restaurant and residential flats between 2016 and 2017. Decorative plasterwork was inserted around the neo-Greek 1930s banking hall scheme in 2021, and by 2022 the basement strong vault was adapted as a restaurant and kitchen.

Reasons for Listing

The former bank and bank manager’s house, 1-3 Wood Street, built 1881 for Leatham Tew & Company, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:
* as a good-quality, well-preserved example of late-C19 commercial architecture presenting a highly distinctive contribution to the streetscape of Wood Street and Silver Street;

* a good example of Queen Anne Revival architecture by the notable regional architectural practice of John Neill & Son;

* for the good-quality craftsmanship particularly displayed in the extensive decorative embellishments to both the exterior and interior, including 1930s refitting.

Historic interest:
* as one of several banks built in the centre of Wakefield, a thriving centre for banking in the C18 and C19, it highlights the development of banking and its associated architectural fashions in northern commercial towns and cities.

Group value:
* with the nearby Grade II-listed 65 Westgate, a late C18 purpose-built banking premises and house built for Ingram & Kennet Bank and taken over by Leatham Tew & Company in 1809.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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