Royal Arcade

The Royal Arcade is an L-plan shopping arcade built between 1892 and 1893 by architects Lawson and Donkin. It connects Christchurch Road to Palmerston Road and features a mixed Renaissance facade made of red brick, stone, stucco, and buff brick dressings. The arcade has a triple-arched stucco entrance, which is doubled in depth, topped with a large glazed lunette outlined in buff brick. This lunette has a rosette in each spandrel and an ornate circular balcony that is corbelled out from the keystone, adorned with sculptured plumes. The entrance is framed by a shaped gable with three stepped round-arched windows, the central window featuring septfoil tracery, and is flanked by balustrades. Above, a high splayed hipped roof rises to a cupola with a segmental pedimented bull's eye and a square leaded dome topped with an obelisk finial and vane.

The arcade's symmetrical side wings are three storeys high, with rounded corners at the centre. They feature pilastered shopfronts with an egg-and-tongue cornice and scrolled pediments above the first-floor mullioned and transom windows, which are set within a blind round-headed arcade. The second-floor windows are also mullioned and transomed, with lunette windows featuring bull's eyes above in shaped gables. The Palmerston Road facade mirrors this design, with the central lunette of the arcade framed by a simple flat-parapetted red brick wall.

The rear of the arcade on Haviland Road West has workshop-type shops with living accommodation above, featuring bargeboarded dormers. Inside, the arcade consists of two walks, each with eight bays that meet at a central octagon. The shop fronts are supported by detached ornamental iron columns, while the first-floor windows have Cinquecento tracery in their glazing bars. The roof is supported by transverse iron arches and features a pitched glass roof with a pitched lantern down the centre. The octagon includes a bow shop front to the east, which supports a large ornamental bowed balcony, possibly originally intended as a café.

The Royal Arcade, along with Nos 562 and 566 and the Hippodrome, forms a cohesive group.