Former Devonport Market House

SX 4554 NW PLYMOUTH SOUTH YARD Devonport Dockyard 740-1/96/210 Former Devonport Market House (SO 53)

GV II

Market hall, now store. 1852, by St Aubyn. Squared, snecked limestone with granite dressings, cast-iron, and mineral felt roof. Italianate style. Rectangular plan with NW clock tower. EXTERIOR: externally 2 storeys; 3-bay range. Ground floor has three round-arched doorways, the right and middle ones blocked and the left with double doors, linked by an impost band, a cornice, with 3 upper iron-framed fully-glazed gables containing an arcade of round-arched windows beneath a panelled band and moulded gables with 3:6:3 round-arched lights, and glazing bars. Corner tower set diagonally has a battered rusticated ashlar base with open round-arches and a cornice, tower has rusticated quoins to a cornice which rises over a clock-face each side, and open belfry with keyed round arches and balustrades, modillion cornice and swept leaded roof to a weather vane. Right-hand return stone, 1 :3 upper windows, similar left-hand side has brick ground floor with two round-arched doorways. Rear is altered, a rubble ground-floor with corrugated iron lean-to roof has incomplete sides, beneath a corrugated iron screen and iron gables as the front. INTERIOR: contains a good cast-iron double Imperial stair to the rear which rises front and back to a landing and then turns to the sides 'to a cast-iron gallery with lattice railings on three sides of the hall, on round columns with palm leaf capitals, and three parallel iron-trussed roofs. HISTORY: particularly notable for the architectural interest of the tower, and the good internal ironwork and glazing. (Source: The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: Devon: London: 1989: 652).

Listing NGR: SX4528254562