Victorian Shopping Arcade

TORQUAY

SX9263 TORWOOD STREET 885-1/18/283 (South side) 23/05/73 Nos.3-21 (Odd) Victorian Shopping Arcade (Formerly Listed as: TORWOOD STREET Compass Club and Torquay Motors)

GV II

Designed as a theatre but never completed; in use as shopping precinct. 1909-15. To designs of PR Wood. Bathstone ashlar; roof concealed behind parapet; stacks with stone shafts with moulded cornices. Neo-Baroque style. PLAN: On a corner site, long side to Torwood Street, entrance on return, facing up Torwood Street. Interior gutted for shops. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys. Grand symmetrical 1:5:1-bay elevation to Torwood Street. Ground-floor bays divided by rusticated piers with fascia and projecting cornice on brackets. Centre 5 bays broken forward and divided, above ground floor, by giant engaged Ionic columns with an entablature and dentil cornice below the parapet. Large windows with moulded architraves and overlights glazed with small panes. Recessed outer bays with rusticated quoins. Round-headed windows have eared architraves, moulded keystones and sill brackets; panels below carved with names of Irving and Garrick. Statue groups of Fame and Justice over outer bays. The entrance elevation on the left return is 1:3:1 bays, the centre 3 bays, canted, pedimented and broken forward on Doric columns, upper storey divided by Ionic pilasters, relief of Neptune in pediment. INTERIOR: Modernised. (Buildings of England: Pevsner N and Cherry B: Devon: London: 1952-1989: P.856).

Listing NGR: SX9201463471