Havens department store, Westcliff-on-Sea

Havens department store, Westcliff-on-Sea

A three-storey department store dating to around 1935, built with a structural steel frame. The rear and side elevations are of gault brick, while the principal façade on Hamlet Court Road is clad in Burmantofts white faience. The building is set perpendicular to the street, adjoining No 136 to the south with a narrow alleyway to the north.

The Hamlet Court Road façade is symmetrically composed into three bays, separated by giant order pilasters that rise through the upper two storeys. At street level, a three-part canted bay window arrangement with two sets of glass double doors forms the shop entrance. The faience cladding features Beaux Arts style motifs including festoons in the upper portions of the pilasters and, on the parapet, a run of decorative crosses with a pair of circular floral motifs flanking the store name 'HAVENS' in modish sans serif lettering. Crittall metal windows run floor to ceiling on the first and second floors, divided by metal panels decorated with Art Deco lobed-rectangle motifs. The shop front was modified in the 1970s with new display windows, back-lit opal glass signage and a projecting canopy, though beneath this the original 1930s canted bay arrangement survives along with terrazzo flooring and glazed mottled-tile stall risers.

The rear portion steps down from three storeys to two storeys, with a flat roof incorporating two original decorative skylights, and finally to a single-storey projection. This single-storey section retains the pitched roof of a late 19th-century external storehouse, integrated into the building as part of an extension completed by 1950.

The three storeys of the front portion were originally open-plan shop floors with separate storerooms; the ground and first floors remain so configured. A 1930s lift with wrought-iron grilles and inlaid oak screens above the doors, set centrally on the north side, connects the levels. Two original sets of broad canted stairs with oak balustrades, newel post finials and classical niches are positioned on the south side; the set connecting the first and second floors retains a fielded panelled underside.

The ground floor retains original parquet and wooden-block flooring, oak curved and banded island shelving units and central rectangular fitted tables with curved corners. A continuous curved soffit light fitting at ceiling level provides indirect uplighting. Most other fittings including veneer panelling and the central counter date from a refurbishment of the 1980s or 1990s.

At first-floor level, several Art Deco style octagonal display tables are permanent fixtures. An octagonal stained-glass rooflight originally lit an open gallery overlooking the ground floor; this gallery is now blocked with matching parquet flooring. A colourful stained-glass lunette window in the centre of the east wall is a later replacement, probably introduced in the 1970s. Storerooms to the north and south retain simple slatted timber shelving and sections of glass block flooring. A staff kitchen accessed from the south-eastern ground floor retains plain 1930s tiling, dado-level matchboard panelling, fitted cupboards and a further stained-glass rooflight.

The third floor is now used as office and storage space with no original features retained. The interior of this level is excluded from the listing, as is the late 19th-century external storehouse integrated into the building and the ground-floor fittings of the 1980s and 1990s. The 1930s stair and lift serving the third floor are included.