Royal Worcester Porcelain Showroom, Now Resaurant

Built in 1851 as a showroom for the Royal Porcelain Works and now a restaurant, this building demonstrates group value as an important example of Victorian industrial architecture. Designed by Robert Armstrong, the building was altered before 1900 with the addition of stucco to the front facade. Constructed of pinkish-brown brick in English bond, with painted stucco to the front and ashlar dressings, it features a main roof with a central glazed skylight. The building has a rectangular plan and is designed in a Neo-classical style.

The exterior consists of a single, tall storey, with a wide central bay flanked by lower, single-storey wings. The main range has a central entrance with four renewed roll-edged steps leading to double doors with a fanlight featuring “V” glazing bars. The entrance surround breaks forward, exhibiting horizontal rustication, a frieze with corbelled modillions, and guttae to the cornice. A continuous crowning moulded cornice tops the building, followed by a parapet with shaped copings and a central panel displaying the coat of arms of Queen Elizabeth II; urns adorn the ends. Outer bays contain six-pane windows within cambered arched surrounds, with plain reveals and shallow sills. The left return features pilaster buttresses and lean-to side ranges with pairs of nine-pane metal-frame windows and two plank doors.

Inside the entrance, panelled coving is present, and the door surround has fluted pilasters within a tooled architrave with panelled reveals. A fluted frieze with rosettes sits above, alongside embellished boxed beams.

Historically, the building was constructed to coincide with the Great Exhibition of 1851. Until around 1970, it was topped by a massive Coade Stone royal coat of arms dating from 1806, which was reused from an earlier building. Robert Armstrong, an Irish architect known for his work in the Staffordshire Potteries, subsequently founded the Belleek Porcelain Works in Ireland. During the Second World War, the building was used to manufacture ceramic components for aircraft. Notable visitors have included Edward VII, Queen Alexandra, George V, the Duke of Windsor, George VI, and Princess Elizabeth (later Elizabeth II), who opened it as the Dyson Perrins Museum in 1951.