Former Trounsons' store and warehouse

Former Trounsons' store and warehouse

A former retail and wholesale shop with storerooms and a warehouse on Alma Place, now in commercial and residential use. Built in 1869 and extended in 1890, both phases designed by James Hicks.

The main building on Fore Street is constructed of granite ashlar and rubble to the ground floor, with buff and yellow brick, red brick and elvan dressings to the upper floors. It follows a rectangular plan to the north, with a long tapered west wing and a shorter rectangular block to its east that forms an internal courtyard. The separate warehouse on Alma Place is rectangular in plan.

The principal north elevation to Fore Street is three storeys and six bays wide, designed in Venetian Gothic style. The two eastern bays form the 1890 extension. Here, the ground floor contains a narrow arched doorway with fat polished pink-granite columns bearing acanthus capitals, and a segmental brick archway now containing a twentieth-century recessed entrance that retains part of an early shopfront scheme. The original 1869 building to the west is marked by a large granite pier with scrolled and decorative consoles, now painted, featuring prominent arched heads and a shallow cornice. Further piers are located at the left and right corners of the building and on the return to Alma Place. A capital on the front originally bore a monogram reading 'ST', possibly removed in 1953. The ground floor of the original section contains a large window with a banded-brick segmental arch to the left of a two-bay shopfront with splayed central entrance. The surround is timber, and the upper part of the windows have central ovoid lights, which are replicated within the brick arch above.

The upper floors are divided vertically by giant brick Composite pilasters and horizontally by bands of blind arcading with red-brick sill bands. First-floor windows have banded segmental heads beneath stilted polychrome arches of elvan nail-head mouldings, with set-in stone shafts bearing Corinthian capitals flanking four-pane sash windows with arched heads. Second-floor windows comprise pairs of round-headed windows with central shafts and red-brick bands to the heads, again featuring nail-head mouldings. A modillioned stone cornice extends across the width of the building and one bay of the Alma Place return, topped by white-brick pedestals bearing carved stone finials. The corner and Alma Place finials appear to be stylised animals holding Duchy of Cornwall shields.

The east elevation facing Alma Place is seven bays in length from north to south. The upper floors of the northernmost bay are treated identically to the Fore Street elevation, although the ground floor is faced in granite ashlar. The remaining upper floors follow a matching, if simpler, style with granite dressings to the windows. The second bay on the first floor has two framed panels instead of a window, possibly intentionally designed to house an advertisement, and the end bay is blind. The ground floor is granite rubble beneath a stone dog-tooth cornice, with granite quoin window surrounds, although the windows themselves are blocked. Only one bay of the rear elevation is visible, comprising large loading windows with granite quoins on the upper floors and a canopy for a hoist at eaves level.

At right angles to the rear elevation and facing Alma Place stands a separate three-storey three-bay warehouse at 9 Alma Place, constructed of granite rubble with granite quoins to the corners and window openings. This building has been converted to modern use, with twentieth-century timber sash windows and a modern shopfront at ground floor level. A canopy for a hoist survives at the centre at eaves level. The two buildings are connected by a single narrow bay containing twentieth-century windows and an alleyway entrance to the central courtyard.

The interior of the ground floor shop units has been altered. The upper floors have been converted to residential use.