5 Southside Street

A former warehouse built in the mid-19th century on the site of earlier buildings. By the late 19th century it served as a bonded spirit store for Coates and Co (Plymouth Gin). From the late 20th century until 2002, the first floor was occupied by Robert Lenkiewicz as an art studio, and a pannier market was held on the ground floor from the late 20th century until 2014.

The building is constructed of coursed Plymouth limestone with lighter-coloured dressings, under slate roofs. It has an irregular tapered plan, aligned north-west to south-east.

The two-storey building presents a five-bay south-west elevation facing Southside Street, which is symmetrical and slightly canted. At the centre is the main entrance with a double-leaf door and blocked fanlight. Above this is a double-leaf taking-in door with a louvered fanlight. To the left of the door jamb is a corbel and drill holes that would have secured a former swivelling loading hoist. The central bay is flanked on both floors by pairs of windows. All openings have keyed rounded arches and large dressed quoins. Two ground-floor windows have been blocked, and another has been lowered to create a secondary entrance at the western end. The remaining windows have timber casements secured by iron bars. This elevation features ashlar quoins, a plinth, mid- and first-floor string courses, and a substantial parapet with large dentil blocks to the cornice. Behind the parapet are two hipped roofs running east to west, the right-hand one being substantially larger than the left, with a gable end on the east side.

The north-east elevation facing The Parade is rendered and topped by a copped gable. Part of this elevation is decorated by Lenkiewicz's mural, known as the Barbican or Elizabethan Mural. It depicts Elizabethan figures including William Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth I, and explores Jewish-influenced metaphysical ideas current in England during the period 1580-1620. The composition is loosely based on the Hebrew letter 'aleph'. Vertical timber battens have been fixed to the mural. A fanlight to a former ground-floor opening is visible at the centre, and to the right is a further undecorated bay containing a modern metal door. A large stone buttress projects from the north-eastern corner of the building.

The ground floor has a regular arrangement of cast-iron columns supporting large timber ceiling joists, the ends of which rest on stone corbels. The floor is covered in large stone slabs. The position of a former weighing machine is visible as a scar on the floor near the main door, with an associated iron rod and hook hanging from the ceiling above. A metal circular staircase with some decorative details stands in the north-west corner. A timber staircase on the eastern side and plasterboard partitions in the south-west corner are late-20th century additions. Stone relieving arches are visible in the south-east wall on both floors, some representing blocked openings.

The first floor has large timber floorboards and is subdivided by early-20th century timber partitions. A cross-axial ceiling beam at the northern end is supported by stone corbels and two cast-iron columns. Near the centre of the room is a large trap door with a timber support for a hoist in the ceiling above. The south-west end wall contains a large central plank door on metal rollers and two further openings of various phases on either side, all blocked. The building is topped by a large queen-post roof to the south and a smaller queen-truss roof to the north.