Castle Street, red brick, British Foreign Marine Insurance Co building,city centre, Liverpool,Merseyside,England,UK, L2

A decorated building with Mosaics in Liverpool – the British and Foreign Marine Insurance Company Building, Castle Street Castle Street, one of Liverpool’s most historic streets, contains many splendid buildings, mostly of Victorian vintage, and among them one of the most lavishly decorated is the former British and Foreign Marine Insurance Company Building, nos. 3-5 Castle Street at the Old Town Hall end almost on the corner of Dale Street. It is five bays wide at ground level, with more numerous windows higher up, with projecting bay windows higher up to the left and right ends, and a modest central portico with some slight emphasis given by a projection of the bay immediately above. Higher up – there are five storeys above the ground floor including the dormers – are a long balcony and pointy roofs. The terra cotta sculpture is nicely done and consists, as is often the case, of rather small embellishments so that the effect on such a large building is to give some vague impression of adornment and encrustation rather than individual sculptures which hold their own as additions to the building. The various arched windows however give rise to considerable opportunity for leafy spandrels (see this page for general introduction to spandrel sculpture), rather good corbels, birds, and to revert to the nautical theme appropriate for the building, fanciful fish, scallops, etc. Read more at http://www.speel.me.uk/sculptplaces/lpoolcastlest3.htm