Elephant Tea Rooms
Elephant Tea Rooms | |
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![]() The Elephant Tea Rooms | |
![]() ![]() Location within Tyne and Wear | |
General information | |
Architectural style | Hindu Gothic |
Address | 65–66 |
Town or city | Sunderland |
Country | United Kingdom |
Coordinates | 54°54′27″N 1°22′56″W / 54.907434°N 1.382132°W |
Construction started | 1873 |
Completed | 1877 |
Client | Ronald Grimshaw |
Owner | Royal Bank of Scotland |
Technical details | |
Floor count | 3 |
Design and construction | |
Architect | Frank Caws |
The Elephant Tea Rooms is a Grade II listed building in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, England.[1] The building was constructed from 1872 to 1877 by Henry Hopper to a design by architect Frank Caws for William Grimshaw, a local tea merchant and grocer,[2] in a blend of the high Victorian Hindu Gothic and Venetian Gothic styles. This was a selling point, as the exotic style and name advertised the exotic origins of the tea sold there. The building has housed the Local History Library of the city since 2020.[3]
Many internet sources give Ronald Grimshaw as the name of the tea merchant and grocer, but William Grimshaw's great-grandson of that name was not born until 1905, thirty years later. See Bill Greenwell's "The Elephant Tea Family" (2021).
Exterior[]
The exterior is polychrome and was constructed from brick, terracotta and faience. The ground floor has a full-width tiled fascia continuing along to the neighbouring building; this 20th-century alteration may conceal earlier detail. The arcaded first floor has sash windows with sloping sills in the Gothic faience arcade, and crocket capitals to the , alternate , raised pointed arches and . The ogee window heads have fleur-de-lys finials in front of lozenge-patterned terracotta spandrels. The eaves cornice has a corbelled trefoil frieze.
The attic windows have faience surrounds, similar to the first floor arcade, two trefoil-headed transom lights over mullioned lights, each window is in a high gable with round-headed niches in a banded faience decoration and moulded coping. Between the gables there are bracketed corniced shelves carrying faience elephants under bracketed gables with trefoil bargeboards with a crocket decoration and elaborate finials.
The round oriel corner turret has nookshafts like the other first floor arcades but with arcaded central lights and blind arches, below a band of linked, splayed shafts and large eaves gargoyles. Above are further gablets are at the foot of the banded round turret with bracketed, eaves and a Buddhist-style conical faience roof with a series of ringed ribs. Smaller high cones on patterned drums are behind the crow-stepped gable foot at the end of each front.
The steeply-pitched roof is of slate, has ridges from each gable with terracotta crestings, faience gable copings and tall, faience coping (behind the elephant gablets) and brick chimneys.
See also[]
References[]
- ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 17 October 2013. Retrieved 20 August 2014.
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: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 8 December 2015. Retrieved 28 September 2014.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ "Local History Library @ ETR".
Sources[]
- "Sunderland City Council: Listed buildings register - Description". Archived from the original on 17 October 2013. Retrieved 20 August 2014.
- Grade II listed buildings in Tyne and Wear
- Buildings and structures in the City of Sunderland
- Venetian Gothic architecture in the United Kingdom
- Sunderland
- Tyne and Wear building and structure stubs