Former Premier Cafe, 3 High Street, Cheadle

This former café with a baker's shop on the ground floor is a late 19th-century building that underwent Art Deco remodelling in the mid-1930s. The structure is brick-built and faced with stucco, with a tile-hung gable and slate roof.

The building comprises a ground-floor shop with a rear staircase leading to two first-floor café rooms.

Exterior

The shop front features a central entrance with a lobby and recessed doorway, flanked by angled plate glass lights with slender timber corner mullions. Large plate glass windows to each side have timber transoms and transom lights decorated with stylised sunburst etchings. The lobby has a yellow terrazzo floor with a diamond pattern and border of blue terrazzo. The timber door contains a plate glass panel with an etched geometric Art Deco pattern, silver metal upright door handle, low letterbox and sill band. A shaped transom light above the lobby also features etching.

The stall risers are of painted cement, originally black Vitrolite, as is the ground-floor shop window surround including the fascia. The painted, scribed stucco first floor has a wide canted oriel window with plate windows, slender timber glazing bars and a row of four upper casements with geometric etched patterns. The sill is of painted cement. To each side of the window is a framed, stepped black Vitrolite panel.

The gable above has timber bargeboards and is tile-hung with orange-brown tiles. The slate roof has decorative orange terracotta ridge tiles and a tall brick stack to the right-hand side of the front pitch.

Interior

Ground Floor

The ground-floor shop has a floor of large square beige terrazzo tiles with a moulded green terrazzo skirting. At the rear of the shop, rising from the right-hand corner, is a staircase with an angled curtail step and two more steps to a quarter-turn landing, then a straight flight leading up to a landing between the front and rear rooms. The outer tread ends of the steps are framed with a chrome strip with an outer curved chrome balustrade featuring slender rectangular-section balusters and three oval-section rails. An extra curved handrail has been added to the lower three steps.

The treads are covered in green marbled linoleum with black edging and inset black line to each side, with black and metal nosings. The inner staircase skirting is black with thin chrome bands. On the quarter landing is an original Art Deco corner display cabinet which the skirting and linoleum respects. The cabinet has a chrome frame with black glass front and side panels and a stepped line of orange mosaic tiles with mirrored mosaic tiles above. At dado level the staircase has three stepped rows of square mirrored tiles. A more recent handrail has been attached to the wall over the mirrored tiles.

The shop has a modern suspended ceiling with integral lights. The rear rooms have terrazzo flooring but have otherwise been refurbished. The west wall of the enclosed passageway to the rear has been rebuilt further out in breezeblock, faced externally in brick.

First Floor

The small first-floor landing has a black and chrome strip skirting and a dado band of three rows of square mirrored tiles, with double doors opening into the front room and a single door opening into the back room. The stairwell has a timber frame along the front and return walls inset with panes of opaque marbled green glass with lighter green horizontal and stepped strips. The rear wall has a two-light timber frame inset with opaque green glass panes and strips.

The double doors are timber veneered with stepped upper lights with similar opaque green glass and upright, projecting, octagonal chrome door handles with shaped plates. The single door has similar door handles and two horizontal rectangular lights with pierced brass grilles in a stylised Art Deco feather pattern.

Front Room

The front room is designed to be divisible into two spaces with a thin partition wall containing a wide, timber-framed opening which could be closed by screens, no longer present. Both spaces have veneered dados with thin vertical black strips, black and chrome skirtings and chrome edging top bands. The rear part of the room is missing part of the veneer beneath the green glass, though the skirting and chrome edging band remain.

Above the dado is a row of square mirrored tiles with patterns of triangular, stepped tiles and vertical bands of tiles decorating the walls. A deep, vertically grooved, painted timber frieze runs round both spaces with angled, opaque pink marbled glass cornice strips above with uplighters behind. In the centre of the rear wall at frieze height is an octagonal painted glass clock face.

The larger front space has a contemporary blocky, beige-glazed ceramic fireplace to the west side wall with a replica round-headed mirror over the mantelpiece. The oriel window is wood-lined with a square-section chrome security rail. There are cast-iron radiators to the left of the window and also against the east side wall in both front and rear spaces.

The rear space has a curved coat rail fixed across the corner between the east wall and partition wall. The west wall has a pair of wood veneered doors with upright octagonal door handles and black and chrome architraves. The left-hand door opens onto a narrow staircase to an attic room and the right-hand door is for an under-stair store cupboard. Set at a right-angle to the left-hand door is a doorway into a small room with a modern suspended ceiling.

It is unclear when the plaster texturing of the ceilings took place. The fan wall sconces are modern reproductions.

Back Room

The narrower back room has a moulded cornice and a large circular roof light with fluted plaster edging to the aperture and a shallow-domed decorative glazed grille of pierced brass. The outermost pierced patterns retain faint traces of colour. The central fan and light is a modern addition. Over the domed grille is a pyramidal lantern.

The east side of the room has three stepped, full-height painted timber and glazed screens. The timber dados of the two outer screens both have four horizontal-rectangular grilles of pierced brass in a stylised feather pattern. Above the dados are pierced brass panels glazed with small, square panes of green glass. Attached to the side of the left-hand screen is a curved timber coat and umbrella stand, which obscures the panel to access lighting behind the screens. There is a similar, but narrower, screen to the left-hand side of the rear, south wall and to the north wall adjacent to the entrance door, the latter with four similar brass grilles to the dado, to the rear of a cast-iron radiator.

On the right-hand side of the south wall is an original doorway leading into a short corridor, originally with WCs to the left, and an external fire door. The door has a horizontal rectangular light with a pierced brass feather-pattern grille and similar upright, octagonal door handles, but in brass.

The small room to the left is entered by a doorway inserted in the south wall. The painted timber door has an original brass upright octagonal door handle to the outside, with a facsimile to the inside, and is likely to have been rehung from its original position in the short corridor. Above the inserted doorway is a clock face with brass shapes for numerals attached to the wall.

Recessed into the west wall is a servery with a horizontal painted timber panel and row of five leaded lights over with geometric patterns of coloured and textured glass. To the rear the lower wall of painted timber has four horizontal-rectangular pierced brass feather-pattern grilles. Above is timber shelving with a mirrored back and to each side is a curved shelving area with a brass top and side rail, which may be later alterations. To the front is a bar counter with a brass top with curved ends to the staff entry at the right-hand end, which may be a later alteration. Beneath the countertop is a sink and shelving.

The north wall screen has a projecting painted timber screen and shelving with a brass pole and a round-ended brass container with side rail at the left-hand end and projecting painted timber shelving at the right-hand end, both of which may be later additions.