This late-Victorian classical building with heavy Dutch influences was constructed in 1898?9 to the design of H. Tudor Thornley for the ship owners John Cory & Sons Ltd. It was notably occupied by the same company into the 1990s.

Located at the south-west corner of Mount Stuart Square and James Street, this four'storey structure presents eight bays to the east and four to the south. The ground-floor is dressed with channel-rusticated stone, with red brick and Bath stone dressings above. There are finals with semi-circular caps at the corners. The eastern elevation is topped with three gabled dormers, the central one with a stone frontispiece with octagonal colonettes topped with ball finials, the central one extending through a broken pediment. On either side of this central frontispiece are circular windows and massive stone chimneys, below which are panelled second- and third-storey pilasters between the second and third and sixth and seventh bays. The other bays are articulated with second- and third-storey pilasters topped with enriched capitals. The second-storey windows have decorated heads. Those in the first, second, and seventh bays have dentil cornices on channelled brackets supporting decorated panels flanked by volutes. The other windows are topped with pediments. The double-door entrance is in the northernmost bay of the eastern face, topped with a segmental fanlight and under an entablature supported on channelled volute brackets with `JOHN CORY & SONS LD? inscribed on the frieze above which is a smaller decorated entablature with pediment. The second-storey double-window above is topped with a dentil cornice supported on channelled brackets and topped with a pediment. The southern elevation is similar to the eastern elevation with a central frontispiece and second-storey windows topped with pediments.

(Sources: Cadw Listed Buildings Database; Victorian Society Tour Notes, VS01/16; Newman, Buildings of Wales: Glamorgan (London: 1995), pp. 271-272)
A.N. Coward, RCAHMW, 19.07.2018