Breakaway Sports Centre Breakaway Sports Club

This is a redundant parish church, now used as a sports centre, located on Meadfoot Road in Torquay. It was built in 1894 by Watson and Watson on the site of an earlier chapel. The church is constructed from snecked local grey limestone rubble with sandstone dressings, and has a slate roof with ornamental ridge tiles. It represents a late example of the Early English/Decorated Revival style.

The building includes a nave, an apsidal chancel, north and south aisles, north and south transepts, a north porch, a chapel, and a vestry. The conversion to a sports centre involved walling off the aisles and inserting a floor in the nave, with steps leading up from the former chancel.

The exterior features a 3-sided apse with 2-light Decorated traceried windows. The transept windows are 4-light and transomed, with angle buttresses. A moulded 2-centred doorway with nook shafts is within the porch on the north transept. The aisles have lean-to roofs and bays divided by buttresses and pilasters, with triple lancets and clerestory lancets. A 3-light Decorated traceried window is located in the west end of the south aisle, while a 7-light west window incorporates Geometric Decorated tracery. The 3-stage tower has an angled buttress and a 3-sided stair turret. It features a richly moulded 2-centred arched west doorway, pairs of large lancets, a frieze of blind trefoil-headed arcading, big paired louvred lancet openings with Y tracery to the belfry, and an octagonal parapet with a trefoil-headed arcade. The angle and flying buttresses have conical spires with blind trefoil-headed arcading. Lucarnes with Y tracery are set in the spire.

Inside, the aisles display octagonal piers with stiff-leaf carved capitals. A nave open roof remains, incorporated into the first-floor gymnasium and supported by arched bracing on stiff-leaf carved corbels. The chancel retains polychromy, including stencilled wall decoration and a painted roof springing from the window arches. Notably, the stained glass remains intact, including three east windows by Drake, and an excellent west window from 1907 designed by Maurice Drake and executed by Drake and Son. This is a late example of the Early English revival, and the spire is a significant element of the townscape.