Royal Worcester Porcelain Showroom, Now Resaurant

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 3 October 2023 to reformat the text to current standards.

SO8554SW 620-1/20/511

WORCESTER SEVERN STREET (east side) Royal Worcester Porcelain showroom, now restaurant

(Formerly Listed as: SEVERN STREET Worcester Royal Porcelain Works (Isolated block near entrance))

05/04/71

II Built as a showroom for the Royal Porcelain Works, now restaurant. 1851 with later additions and alterations including addition of stucco to front facade pre-1900. Architect: Robert Armstrong. Pinkish-brown brick in English bond with painted stucco to front facade and ashlar dressings; main roof has central glazed skylight, otherwise concealed. Rectangular plan. Neo-classical style.

EXTERIOR: single tall storey, wide bay between lower, single-storey, single bay wings. Main range: central entrance in breakforward, four renewed roll-edged steps to double six-raised-and-fielded-panel doors fanlight with 'V' glazing bars, deep reveals have pilasters and with fleurons to arch; the surround breaks forward and has horizontal rustication drawn into voussoirs over arch, frieze with corbel modillions, and guttae to cornice. Continuous crowning moulded cornice; parapet, shaped copings and central panel surmounted by coat of arms of Queen Elizabeth II; urns to ends. Outer bays, alike: six-pane windows, cambered-arched and in cambered arched surrounds, plain reveals and shallow sills. Left return: main range has pilaster buttresses, lean-to side ranges with pairs of nine-pane metal-frame windows and two plank doors.

INTERIOR: entrance has panelled coving, door surround has fluted pilasters within tooled architrave and with panelled reveals. Fluted frieze with rosettes and embellished boxed beams.

HISTORICAL NOTE: built as a showroom to coincide with the Great Exhibition of 1851. Until c1970 the building was surmounted by a massive Coade Stone royal coat of arms dated 1806 and re-used from an earlier building. Robert Armstrong was an Irish architect who made his name in England designing buildings for the Staffordshire Potteries before designing this showroom. He subsequently returned to Ireland where he founded the Belleek Porcelain Works.

During the Second World War ceramic components for aircraft were made here. The building has been visited by Edward VII and Queen Alexandra as Prince and Princess of Wales, George V, the Duke of Windsor, George VI and in 1951 by Princess Elizabeth (later Elizabeth II) who opened it as the Dyson Perrins Museum.

Information provided by Harry Frost, curator of the Worcester Porcelain Museum.

(The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: Worcestershire: Harmondsworth: 1968-1985: 326).