The Bank of England Building is a Grade I

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

located on Castle Street,

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

History

The

Bank of England The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the Kingdom of England, English Government's banker and debt manager, and still one ...

first decided to open premises on Castle Street, Liverpool in 1826, which helped establish the area as the city's financial centre. The present building was designed by Charles Robert Cockerell and built in a

Neoclassical style Neoclassicism, also spelled Neo-classicism, emerged as a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassici ...

between 1845 and 1848. The building was one of three provincial branches he designed for the

in the mid-19th century. The building was used entirely by the bank and did not contain any lettable space to other businesses, which were fast being established in the district. Subsequently, Cockerell built a similar building in Cook Street for this purpose. It was demolished in 1959. The building was used by the Bank of England until 1987. In the 1990s, TSB used the building for a few years before it lay empty. In 2015, homeless activists occupied the building for two weeks before being evicted by police. During the occupation, the activists caused an estimated £46,000 worth of damage to the building. The Ivy restaurant group opened a brasserie in the building in November 2024.

Architecture

The building combines several neoclassical architectural styles, including

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

, Roman and

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

. The most evident of these is Greek, with four Doric style columns 'tying' the ground and first floors together. The building itself is raised up from ground level, sitting atop a rough

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

plinth. The front of the building contained accommodation for the bank's agent, accessible from Union Court. The sub-agent had a similar layout at the rear. Despite only being three bays wide and seven bays deep, the building's design was seen to give it an "overwhelmingly massive and powerful" appearance. The building is regarded as one of Cockerell's most impressive; it was described by

Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (195 ...

as a "masterpiece of Victorian architecture", and by the ''

National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, ...

'' as "one of Cockerell's richest and most inventive buildings." It was

Grade I listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

on 28 June 1952.

References

External links

*
Bank of England on Viewfinder
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bank of England, Liverpool Grade I listed buildings in Liverpool Grade I listed banks Neoclassical architecture in Liverpool Unused buildings in Liverpool

History

Architecture

See also

References

External links