This assessment has been informed by a proportionate level of information sufficient to understand the architectural values of the building, its heritage significances, and the impact on them of the refurbishment works carried out under consent. A preliminary site visit was also undertaken as part of this assessment. The primary objectives of the site visit were to acquire an overview of the character of the building and its heritage significances prior to work commencing and make a photographic record of the building in its pre-refurbishment state. Later visits were made to monitor the refurbishment works to record fabric revealed or about to be removed or concealed. Work had already commenced before our first visit. This meant that some walls and partitions already removed could not be fully recorded or analysed pre-refurbishment. However, enough was left to enable understanding of the form before works began. Much or this affected recent alterations to the building, but there was some older fabric also identified which had been affected. Much of the superficial stripping out had taken place before our first visit. For example, the two first-floor customer lavatories (rooms 1.1 and 1.6) had been stripped of the actual fittings and the wall tiles had all been removed. Whatever the studs on the south-east wall of 1.1 had supported had also gone. The present building originated as three separate structures on the corner of Bird Street and the entrance to the site of the former medieval friary (now a late 19thcenturystreet called The Friary). In 1849 the buildings on the Site were held as three plots under five leases. One of these plots (comprising two of the leases) was owned and occupied by the National Provincial Bank. By 1884 the bank had taken over all three properties. By this date it is believed that the building had undergone nearly all of a range of alterations intended to amalgamate the buildings into one unified structure. The southern building fronting the Friary is believed to have been built in the last decades of the 18th century (rather than c.1820 as in the listing). The middle block, is later, probably dating to the first half of the 19th-century, in line with the listing record and abuts the earlier block. The northernmost structure of the three was demolished and replaced by a small single-storey room attached to the middle block, and a way to the rear yard. A programme of unifying all three structures to a common architectural theme ...