Royal Arcade is a Grade II listed building in the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole local planning authority area, England. First listed on 12 November 1975. Shopping arcade. 7 related planning applications.
Royal Arcade
- WRENN ID
- stubborn-thatch-heron
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole
- Constituency
- Bournemouth East MP: Tom Hayes (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 12 November 1975
- Type
- Shopping arcade
- Address
- Royal Arcade, 1-32, Christchurch Road, BH1 4BT
- OS grid reference
- SZ 113 919
- Coordinates
- 50.72668, -1.84062
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
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.
Local climate
Royal Arcade receives an average of 870 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 62% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 87% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 7 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 96% of listed buildings. Of these, 3 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- Sale history — 1 transaction since 2013
- Related listed building consents — 7 applications
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
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