Elephant Tea Rooms

Elephant Tea Rooms
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 / 54.907434; -1.382132
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[]

• Corder House and Sydenham House

References[]

Sources[]

• "Sunderland City Council: Listed buildings register - Description". Archived from the original on 17 October 2013. Retrieved 20 August 2014.

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