Description

TQ 7655 NW
883/2/10016

Maidstone
BANK STREET
89

23-MAY-01

GV
II
Formerly insurance office, now building society offices. Built in 1913 as the district office of Prudential Assurance Company, possibly by Paul Waterhouse who carried out many commissions for this company. Tudor style. Upper floors timberframed with plaster infill, ground floor of Portland stone. Plain tiled roof with brick chimneystack. Two storeys and attics; two windows. Upper floors have close-studding with plastered infill. Two projecting gables with decorated carved bargeboards and elaborate carved bressumer. Each gable has two paired arched windows with leaded lights with lozenge pattern below. First floor has two oriel windows with three mullioned and transomed windows with leaded lights and carved bases. Decorative central rainwaterhead with quatrefoil motif. Four ogee-shaped stone niches with statues of Kentish worthies under four-centred wooden arches with blank shields and foliate moulding to spandrels. These are (right to left) Archbishop Courtenay, Caxton, Sir Christopher Marlowe and Lord Avebury. Ground floor has stone shopfront with carved stone bosses, pilasters, two oak framed windows and two doorcases with rectangular fanlights and arched doorcases. Right side plank doorcase has studded door.

INTERIOR: Ground floor has square ribbed ceiling with plastered vine motifs. Right side staircase has moulded balusters and newel post with panelling below.

Included as a good and complete example of an insurance office in this unusual arts and crafts style.

Listing NGR: TQ7604555697

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26561458

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

• 
  Lancashire: Manchester and the South-East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  England's Post-War Listed Buildings
• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)
• 
  The Victorian House Manual (2nd Edition): How They Were Built, Improvements & Refurbishment, Solutions to All Common Defects - Includes Relevant ... ... Properties (Haynes Manual) (Haynes Manuals)
• 
  Cumbria: Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Farrow & Ball How to Decorate: Transform your home with paint & paper