The Ivy restaurant brand heading for iconic Liverpool site

Fashionable London eaterie, The Ivy, is set for Liverpool, with a bid to open a branch in Castle Street’s former Bank of England building.

London-based Troia (UK) Restaurants has submitted a planning application to Liverpool City Council to bring the brand to Liverpool.

It would complement two other Ivy sites already established in Manchester.

Liverpool City Council planning committee approved plans to develop a restaurant within the Grade I-listed building in August last year.

Liverpool-based property company JSM Group was behind the scheme to attract a high-end restaurant, which won unanimous approval.

The building sits within the Castle Street Conservation Area.

It was built in a Neoclassical style between 1845 and 1848 and was constructed as one of three branch banks for the Bank of England in the mid-19th century.

The building is regarded as one of architect Charles Robert Cockerell’s most impressive and was described by Nikolaus Pevsner as a “masterpiece of Victorian architecture” and by the National Heritage List for England as “one of Cockerell’s richest and most inventive buildings.”

It has lain empty for a number of years, but was occupied in April 2015 by ‘Love Activists’ in a protest over the provision of shelter and accommodation for the city’s homeless.

Five protesters were subsequently jailed for almost three months in September that year on trespass charges.