Torbay Council

Listed building outline: Torquay Museum 390482

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• Torbay Council boundary
• Listed building outlines

Torquay Museum 390482

• geometry: MULTIPOLYGON (((-3.518290 50.462537,-3.518489 50.462652,-3.518473...
• entry-date: 1975-01-10
• listed-building: 1280070
• name: Torquay Museum
• notes: Museum. 1874-76 to the designs of William Harvey, contractor EP Bovey; Pengelly Memorial Hall and alterations of 1894; gallery addition opened 1928, to the designs of HC Powell, contractors EP Bovey (Ellis, p.13). Local grey limestone rubble with a crazed dressed face with fine joints, Bathstone dressings; shallow pitched hipped slate roof; stacks with shouldered chamfered stone shafts. Ruskinian Venetian Gothic style. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys. Symmetrical 5-bay front. Deep eaves with stone bracketed cornice; plinth of squared masonry brought to course; projecting strings, Bathstone bands. Moulded 3-centred doorway with stiff-leaf carved capitals to the imposts and carved roundels in the spandrels. Fine pair of iron gates with wrought-iron scrolls on either side of the verticals above the dog rail; standards with finials in imitation of Anglo-Saxon beast ornament. Tall ground-floor windows in stone architraves glazed with paired sashes (C20 glazing with timber glazing bars). First-floor windows also paired but divided by shafts, with stiff-leaf capitals. The windows are set in tall arched recesses, the tympana brick, 2 of them filled with fine terracotta relief panels; one shows botany, another shows natural history. The other 3 were never filled, due to lack of funds. The left return is in a similar style with one ground-floor and 2 first-floor windows. INTERIOR: Stair has attractive cast-iron balustrades; stairwell has good hammerbeam roof on carved corbels. The main gallery also has an open roof: arched braces on carved corbels support a tie beam with queen and princess posts with curved braces between. Upper tier of roof concealed by C20 flat ceiling. HISTORY: The museum was designed to house the Torquay Natural History Society, founded 1844, which researched Kent's Cavern and played an important part in the social history of Torquay in the second half of the nineteenth century. (Buildings of England: Pevsner N: Devon: London: 1952-1989: P.854). Listing NGR: SX9231463628
• reference: 390482
• start-date: 1975-01-10