Torquay Museum

Torquay Museum is a museum building dating from 1874 to 1876, designed by William Harvey, with contractor EP Bovey. Subsequent work included the Pengelly Memorial Hall of 1894 and a gallery addition opened in 1928, designed by HC Powell and also built by EP Bovey.

The building is constructed of local grey limestone rubble with a finely jointed dressed face, featuring Bathstone dressings. It has a shallow-pitched hipped slate roof and stacks with shouldered, chamfered stone shafts. The architectural style is Ruskinian Venetian Gothic.

The symmetrical front has five bays with deep eaves supported by stone brackets. The entrance features a moulded 3-centred doorway with carved capitals and roundels in the spandrels. Elaborate iron gates with wrought-iron scrolls flank the entrance, and standards are topped with finials mimicking Anglo-Saxon beast ornament. The ground-floor windows are tall and set in stone architraves with paired sash windows and modern timber glazing bars. First-floor windows are also paired and divided by shafts with stiff-leaf capitals. Three tall, arched recesses contain brick tympana, two of which are filled with terracotta relief panels depicting botany and natural history. Three similar recesses remain unfilled. A return side is of similar design, with one ground-floor and two first-floor windows.

Inside, the staircase has attractive cast-iron balustrades. The stairwell features a good hammerbeam roof supported by carved corbels. The main gallery also has an open roof with arched braces resting on carved corbels and a tie beam with queen and princess posts featuring curved braces; the upper tier of the roof is concealed behind a 20th-century flat ceiling.

The museum was originally designed for the Torquay Natural History Society, established in 1844, which researched Kent's Cavern and made significant contributions to the social history of Torquay during the second half of the 19th century.