Portland House, Bute Street is a former

bank A bank is a financial institution that accepts Deposit account, deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital m ...

building in

Butetown Butetown (or ''The Docks'', ) is a district and community (Wales), community in the south of the city of Cardiff, the capital of Wales. It was originally a model housing estate built in the early 19th century by John Crichton-Stuart, 2nd Marqu ...

, Cardiff, Wales. Completed in 1927, the building was designed for the

National Provincial Bank National Provincial Bank was a retail bank which operated in England and Wales. It was created in 1833 as National Provincial Bank of England, and expanded largely by taking over a number of other banks. Following the transformative acquisitio ...

by their in-house architectural team, F. C. R. Palmer and W. F. C. Holden.

Cadw (, a Welsh verbal noun meaning "keeping/preserving") is the historic environment service of the Welsh Government and part of the Tourism and Culture group. works to protect the historic buildings and structures, the landscapes and heritage ...

considers it "amongst the finest of its style in Wales". Portland House is a

Grade II* 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 ...

. After a period of near dereliction, it was converted to an events venue in the early 21st century.

History

The area of

was developed from the early 19th century by

John Crichton-Stuart, 2nd Marquess of Bute John Crichton-Stuart, 2nd Marquess of Bute, Knight of the Thistle, KT, Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (10 August 1793 – 18 March 1848), styled Lord Mount Stuart between 1794 and 1814, was a wealthy Scottish aristocrat and industrialist in Ge ...

, and by his son, the 3rd marquess. Together they constructed the

docks The word dock () in American English refers to one or a group of human-made structures that are involved in the handling of boats or ships (usually on or near a shore). In British English, the term is not used the same way as in American Engli ...

which enabled the export of iron and coal from the

South Wales Valleys The South Wales Valleys () are a group of industrialised peri-urban valleys in South Wales. Most of the valleys run northsouth, roughly parallel to each other. Commonly referred to as "The Valleys" (), they stretch from Carmarthenshire in the ...

. While the docks themselves were not especially profitable, the enormous increases in the

tonnage Tonnage is a measure of the capacity of a ship, and is commonly used to assess fees on commercial shipping. The term derives from the taxation paid on '' tuns'' or casks of wine. In modern maritime usage, "tonnage" specifically refers to a cal ...

of iron, steel and coal exported through them made the Butes immensely wealthy. Portland House was built in 1926-1927 for the

. It stands on Bute Street to the east of

Mount Stuart Square Mount Stuart Square is a residential and commercial square in Cardiff, Wales. It is located in the Butetown area of the city. Originally developed in the late 1800s as a residential location for nearby dock workers, it quickly became a centre ...

. The architects were F. C. R. Palmer and W. F. C. Holden, who formed the bank's in-house architectural team. The docks traffic was already in decline and Portland House was the last major commercial building to be constructed in Butetown. After a period of near dereliction at the end of the 20th century, Portland House was converted into an events venue in the early 21st.

Architecture and description

The bank was constructed with a

steel frame Steel frame is a building technique with a "skeleton frame" of vertical steel columns and horizontal I-beams, constructed in a rectangular grid to support the floors, roof and walls of a building which are all attached to the frame. The develop ...

set onto a base of

reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete, also called ferroconcrete or ferro-concrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having higher tensile strength or ...

. The whole is faced with

Portland stone Portland stone is a limestone geological formation (formally named the Portland Stone Formation) dating to the Tithonian age of the Late Jurassic that is quarried on the Isle of Portland in Dorset, England. The quarries are cut in beds of whi ...

. It is of seven

bays A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a ''gulf'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...

and five storeys. The first two storeys form the main bank and are fronted by a row of "giant

fluted Fluting may refer to: *Fluting (architecture) *Fluting (firearms) *Fluting (geology) * Fluting (glacial) *Fluting (paper) *Playing a flute (musical instrument) Arts, entertainment, and media *Fluting on the Hump ''Fluting on the Hump'' is the ...

Ionic

column A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member ...

s". The architectural historian John Newman, in his ''Glamorgan'' volume in the Pevsner Buildings of Wales series, wrote of the building's "extraordinary magniloquence".

considers Portland House "amongst the finest of its style in Wales". It is a

Notes

References

Sources

* * {{cite book , last = Newman , first = John , author-link=John Newman (architectural historian) , year = 1995 , title = Glamorgan , series = The Buildings of Wales , url = https://search.worldcat.org/title/33858574 , publisher =

Penguin Books Penguin Books Limited is a Germany, German-owned English publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers the Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the ...

, location= London, UK , isbn = 978-0-140-71056-4 Butetown Grade II* listed buildings in Cardiff Bank buildings in the United Kingdom Buildings and structures completed in 1927