World Choice Travel

World Choice Travel and Shagor Tandoori Takeaway

This is a pair of adjoining buildings forming a prominent corner premises on Crown Square and Vale Street. The left-hand section (now Shagor Takeaway) is designed in Flemish Renaissance town-house style, while its neighbour (World Choice Travel) is in eclectic Gothic style. Both are constructed in red brick and terracotta with particularly fine detailing, sharing a continuous slate roof that is rounded at the corner with Vale Street. The roofline features decorative ridge tiles to the Shagor Takeaway section and raised decorative ironwork to World Choice Travel, with a central chimney displaying panelled and laced decoration and a moulded cornice.

World Choice Travel occupies a 3-bay corner site on three storeys, with frontage to Crown Square on the left and Vale Street on the right, distinguished by a rounded central bay at the corner. The ground floor originally had a Gothic arcuated stone shop front but was replaced between 1925 and 1933 with the present plain shop front during alterations by Hepworth's Tailoring. The current ground floor comprises a central recessed entrance positioned in the rounded corner with large two-part shop windows to the left and right returns, a glazed modern door, modern fascia superimposed over an earlier one, and the original modillion cornice above.

The upper floors feature paired windows to the first and second floors set back within three vertical full-height bays that terminate in twin Gothic arches. The first floor windows have depressed ogee heads whilst the second floor windows have pointed arches, both with roll-moulded jambs. Plain sashes are fitted with decorative leaded upper lights to the first floor and cusped Gothic upper lights to the second floor. A continuous shaft with base, three shaft rings, and a Gothic capital rises through both storeys to divide each pair within each bay and form the central springing point of the upper arches, with shared moulded labels bearing foliated stops. Between the floors are fine foliated terracotta relief panels, laced through to left and right with moulded string courses to top and bottom. The left-hand bay facing Crown Square contains loading bays on each floor to its left, both with complex depressed ogee heads. The smaller first floor loading bay is plain-glazed, whilst the larger second floor loading bay retains its panelled door with paired Gothic lights to the top. A heavy modillion cornice with relief bosses crowns the roofline.

The Shagor Takeaway displays a three-and-a-half storey, three-bay gabled elevation. The ground floor has a modern part-glazed shop front, though it retains the original cast iron Gothic colonnettes dividing the central entrance bay from the broader flanking bays, together with a plain fascia and chamfered stone plinth. The first and second floors have cross-windows to the broader central bay and tall windows to the narrower flanking bays, fitted with plain twentieth-century glazing. The windows are segmentally arched, with those to the centre featuring carved terracotta head keystones. The bays are divided vertically by full-height brick pilasters rising through a heavy cornice above the upper floor to terminate in geometric finials, though the outer finials are missing. Below the cornice runs a continuous moulded string course with horizontal recessed panels between the two floors. Similar treatment appears between the floors, with decorative terracotta relief panels. A Flemish gable crowns the central bay with a surmounting pediment and finial. The gable contains a two-part segmentally-arched window with small-pane upper lights and a moulded label bearing a carved head keystone.

The interior was not inspected at the time of survey.