Patrick Comerford
Sidney Street in the centre of Cambridge takes its name from Sidney Sussex College, and runs from Bridge Street at its junction with Jesus Lane at the north-west end to Saint Andrew’s Street at the junction with Hobson Street at the south-east end, close to Christ’s College.
Apart from Sidney Sussex College, the notable buildings on this street include Holy Trinity Church, but the most engaging may be Lloyds Bank, built as Fosters’ Bank in 1890-1894. The bank was designed by the Victorian architect Alfred Waterhouse (1830-1905) in the Jacobethan style, with complex decoration.
The building is now the Cambridge University Branch of Lloyds TSB. It was built on an irregular site, at the corner of Sidney Street and Hobson Street, and close to the gatehouse of Christ’s College. The original name of Fosters’ Bank still survives over the doorway, a reminder of the Foster family I referred to yesterday, including George Edward Foster (1840-1906) who laid the foundation stone of nearby Saint Andrew’s Street Baptist Church in 1903.
Fosters’ Bank, a striking building in a mixture of the Jacobethan and Dutch Renaissance-style styles, was designed by Alfred Waterhousem who, financially speaking, was probably the most successful of all the Victorian architects. He is associated with Gothic Revival architecture, although he worked in other styles too. He often used eclecticism in his buildings, and the styles he used occasionally included Tudor revival, Jacobethan and Italianate.
Waterhouse was born into a Quaker family, and his brothers were co-founders of the Price Waterhouse partnership that is now part of PriceWaterhouseCoopers. At an early stage in his career he was strongly influenced by John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice (1849) and AWN Pugin’s Contrasts (1836) and The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841).
His best-known works include Manchester Town Hall and the Natural History Museum in London, the Manchester Assize buildings, and Strangeways Prison. He designed many town halls, several hospitals, churches and chapels, such as the Lyndhurst Road Congregational Church, Hampstead, banks, and university buildings in Cambridge, such as Girton College and the chapel in Gonville and Caius College, in Oxford, such as the Broad Street frontage and college dining hall in Balliol College, and in Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds.
The Congregational King’s Weigh House Chapel in Mayfair, which he designed in 1888, is now the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral in London. His hospitals include being the Royal Infirmary Liverpool and University College Hospital London.
Waterhouse was commissioned to build a new bank in Cambridge by the Foster family who wanted a new location for their bank which had outgrown its original location in Trinity Street.
The builder was William Sindall; the structural steel work is by A Hanyside & Co; the stone carving, mainly around the doorway, on the clock tower and in the gables, is by Farmer & Brindley; the ceramic tiles were made by Craven Dunnill & Co; the faience is by Burmantofts; the mosaic flooring is by JF Ebner and J Rust; the decorative ironwork and light fittings are by Hart Son Peard & Co; the lighting was by Belshaw & Co; and the clock in the tower was made by John Moore & Sons of Clerkenwell.
The building exudes the grandeur and confidence of banking in the late Victorian era. It was probably designed to make patrons of the bank feel wealthy and portant there – or to attract the wealthy and important to entrust their money with the bank. Today, many tourists photograph it believing it must be part of the university
Both the exterior and interior of the bank are impressive. The exterior has a stone ground floor with decorative banded stone and red brick covering the two upper floors and the gables. There is a clock tower on the right of the façade above the main entrance, and the lettering above the door still says ‘Fosters’ Bank’.
The clock tower with an ornate clock face gives some idea of the elaborate decoration inside. The main banking hall is octagonal in shape, high and light with a magnificent domed roof. The walls and ornate columns have faience decorations, the floor is of mosaic and there are colourful, glazed, ceramic tiles. A neo-Tudor extension was added in 1935.
The site of Fosters’ Bank at Nos 1 to 5 Sidney Street had once been the site of the Crown and Woolpack Inn, and until 1846 it had been the premises for the Philo-Union or Cambridge Literary Society, founded in 1826 for ‘the diffusion of general knowledge and the discussion of all subjects not of a theological nature’.
Fosters’ Bank was founded in 1804 by the Foster family, Cambridge corn millers, mainly to support their local milling workers. It was also known as the Cambridge & Cambridgeshire Bank.
The bank first opened in attractive premises in Trinity Street, Cambridge, in a building that was once the Turk’s Head coffee bar. Many of the bank’s customers were drawn from the local agricultural industry, and there were branches in St Ives (1830), St Neots (1830), Royston (1834), Ely (1835), Newmarket (1844), Bishop’s Stortford (1874), Littleport (1889), Saffron Walden (1901) and Wisbech.
By the end of the 19th century, Foster’s Bank had outgrown its Trinity Street premises and commissioned Waterhouse to design a magnificent new building. Fosters’ Bank was absorbed into the Capital and Counties Bank in 1904, which later became part of Lloyds Bank.
Both Ebenezer and Richard Foster were Mayors of Cambridge, as were their descendants Charles Finch Foster and Henry S Foster. The Foster family’s milling business continued until 1915. The Foster mill near Cambridge railway station has since been converted into luxury flats. Anstey Hall in Trumpington, once the home of the Foster family, is now a wedding venue.
Richard Foster was also the major backer of the Roman Baths, which were built in Jesus Lane. However, the baths were not a success and closed after less than a year. For many years it was the premises of the Pitt Club, the Cambridge equivalent of the Bullingdon Club in Oxford. I could see the building from my rooms in Cloister Court in Sidney Sussex College when it had become Pizza Express, and it is now Kibou Japanese restaurant.
