Upper Waiting Room, Cliff Railway is a Grade II listed building in the Exmoor National Park local planning authority area, England. First listed on 9 June 1995. Waiting room. 4 related planning applications.
Upper Waiting Room, Cliff Railway
- WRENN ID
- deep-fireplace-woodpecker
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Exmoor National Park
- Constituency
- North Devon MP: Ian Roome (LD)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 9 June 1995
- Type
- Waiting room
- Address
- Upper Waiting Room, Cliff Railway, Lee Road, Lynton and Lynmouth, North Devon
- OS grid reference
- SS 719 496
- Coordinates
- 51.23124, -3.83535
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Upper Waiting Room at the Cliff Railway in Lynton is a small pavilion built in 1890 by Bob Jones. Originally a waiting room, it now incorporates a shop and a small room for rail staff. The structure features timber framing, some rubble walling, and an asbestos cement slate roof.
It has a hipped roof with a gabled dormer at the entrance end, above wide overhanging eaves supported by timber brackets. The main framing members are chamfered and stopped at all junctions, framing alternating wide and very narrow plate-glass lights above plastered panels. The entrance door is panelled with glass and has vertical boards on the top panel, topped by a transom light. The side facing the tracks has two large tripartite plate sashes. The under-eaves are boarded, and the entry side has cleats that likely accommodated shutters, which are no longer present. At the eastern end, there is a flat-roofed section enclosed by a rubble wall with moulded coping.
Inside, the shop has a boarded ceiling, while the office features a plank dado. This cliff railway was the first of its kind in England, opened on Easter Day in 1890, thanks to the efforts of Sir George Newnes and Sir Thomas Hewitt, and it continues to operate using water.
Local climate
Upper Waiting Room, Cliff Railway sits in one of the wettest parts of the UK, with an average of 1,180 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 90% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 98% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 8 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 93% of listed buildings. Of these, 4 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
Sign in or create a free account to unlock:
- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- Related listed building consents — 4 applications
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
Similar buildings
The closest matches to this building from all 493,000 UK listed buildings, by architecture, period and materials.
this building 1 similar nearby listed buildings