Caffyns Garage

Caffyns Garage

Motor car garage and showroom with assembly rooms and offices above, built in 1911 to designs by H Woolnough of Eastbourne. The building occupies a prominent corner site opposite the Grade II listed Eastbourne Town Hall (1884–86 by W Tadman-Faulkes) at the junction of Meads Road and Saffrons Road. Later alterations include a sympathetic but unremarkable 1950s addition to the Saffrons Road frontage.

The building is constructed in red brick with stone banding and other dressings, beneath a hipped tile roof. It presents two principal facades to the two streets. On Meads Road, the ground floor contains arched openings of various sizes originally designed to display cars for sale; while the window glass and frames are modern, the openings remain unaltered from their original configuration. To the left of this, the former Saffron Rooms rise beneath two cross-gables with deep eaves and red brick and stone banded pilasters at the corners. The upper floor is rendered in rough-cast and features a central Venetian window with shell decoration in the tympanum, and two Diocletian windows in the gable above, both with decorative aprons and keystones. The Arts and Crafts lettering advertising the Saffron Rooms survives on the facade.

To the right of the Meads Road elevation, the first floor is articulated by a detached order of stone Ionic columns beneath a plain frieze and console bracket cornice, with a balconette and urn balustrade to the central window. Historic photographs show that the original windows were oeils-de-boeuf draped with garlands of foliage in the manner of Hampton Court Palace; these were replaced in 1965 with rectangular windows with metal glazing bars. The Ionic order continues on the return to Saffrons Road, which also displays large arched openings at ground floor level. The corner pier between the two elevations is banded in red brick and stone, with a stone cartouche beneath the moulded string course. A similar pier concludes the Saffrons Road return, where the building meets a 1950s addition that replaced a section of the Edwardian garage damaged in the Second World War. This later building, constructed in different brickwork and of considerably lower architectural quality, mimics certain details of the main structure—notably the brick and stone banding and Baroque-inspired volutes flanking the central bay—but is readily distinguishable as a later intervention and lacks special interest. Its ground floor, formerly open and containing petrol pumps, has been glazed. The rear and side elevations of the Edwardian block are simpler than the principal facades but retain characterful Arts and Crafts features including tympana with patterned brickwork, Diocletian windows and decorative window aprons.

Interior

A grand open well staircase with decorative metal balustrade and moulded timber handrail serves as a foyer to the car showroom and leads to the offices on the first floor. Originally it provided access only to the former Saffron Rooms; the showroom had a separate entrance, now a window, beneath the balconette. The ground floor remains a large open space for car display, though modern surfaces and later partitions have been introduced to form individual rooms. The mechanics' workshop occupies the rear, with modern finishes throughout.

Upstairs, the assembly room and card room of the former Saffron Rooms are partitioned with 1950s metal and timber work dividing the space into offices. The assembly room ceiling was not visible at inspection and may retain an original cornice similar to that surviving in the former card room. The most impressive space is the former supper room, now the Caffyns company board room, which retains its original doors, serving hatch to an adjoining kitchen, dado and cornice. It features a splendid English Baroque style timber fireplace with a lugged surround, Ionic columns and carved garlands of foliage, along with a decorative chimney piece with plasterwork cartouche and further garland work.

History

The Caffyn family began business in Eastbourne in 1865 as gas and hot water fitters, later becoming electricians and installing the lights on Eastbourne Pier in 1901. In 1903, inspired by a motorist's request to store his Renault, the sons of the first Mr Caffyn established Caffyn Brothers garage at The Colonnade. A second garage followed on Marine Parade in 1906, offering cars for sale, mechanics' services and storage for around one hundred vehicles. The Meads Road building opened in 1911 as a car showroom and garage with assembly rooms (the Saffron Rooms) for hire on the first floor. The interwar period proved prosperous, and the firm opened new branches across Sussex, Kent and Hampshire, several in the streamlined Moderne style then popular for garage architecture. After the Second World War, the head office of Caffyns relocated to the upper floor of the Meads Road garage, where it remained at the time of listing.

Early car-related buildings such as this one followed prevailing architectural fashions. Caffyns Garage on Meads Road and the Marine Parade branch adopted the free classical style of the period. Some designs were consciously vernacular or locally sympathetic, particularly following 1920s legislation reacting against countryside spoliation. By the end of the interwar period, many car-related buildings were constructed in the streamlined continental Moderne style, which conveyed leisure, wealth and modernity—the ideal expression for an industry that later came to favour the utilitarian buildings and bland corporate signage of modern petrol stations and garages following the Second World War.