Former Trounsons' store and warehouse, Redruth, Cornwall

Summary

Former retail and wholesale shops and storerooms, with a warehouse on Alma Place; now in commercial and residential use. 1869, extended in 1890, by James Hicks.

Description

Former retail and wholesale shops and storerooms, with a warehouse on Alma Place; now in commercial and residential use. 1869, extended in 1890, by James Hicks.

MATERIALS: granite ashlar and rubble to the ground floor; buff and yellow brick with red brick and elvan dressings to the upper floors.

PLAN: rectangular plan to the north, with a long tapered west wing with a shorter rectangular block to its east forming an internal courtyard. The former warehouse is rectangular in plan.

EXTERIOR: the main Fore Street building is designed in a Venetian Gothic style. The principal elevation (north) is three storeys and six bays wide. The two bays on the east are the 1890 extension and on the ground floor comprise a narrow arched doorway (now glazed) with fat polished pink-granite columns with acanthus capitals, and a segmental brick-archway now containing a C20 recessed entrance which retains part of an early shopfront scheme. The original building, to the right, is marked by a large granite pier with scrolled and decorative consoles (now painted) with prominent arched heads and a shallow cornice; piers are also located at the left and right corners of the building and on the return to Alma Place. A further capital on the front originally had a ‘ST’ monogram (possibly removed in 1953). The ground floor of the original building comprises a large window with a banded-brick segmental arch to the left of a two-bay shopfront with a splayed central entrance. The surround is timber and the top part of the windows have central ovoid lights, replicated within the brick arch.

The upper floors are divided vertically by giant brick Composite pilasters, and horizontally by bands of blind arcading with red-brick sill bands. The first-floor windows have banded segmental heads under stilted polychrome arches of elvan nail-head mouldings, with set-in stone shafts with Corinthian capitals flanking four-pane sash windows with arched heads. At the second floor each window bay has a pair of round-headed windows with central shafts and red-brick bands to the heads, again with nail-head mouldings. A modillioned stone cornice extends the width and one bay of the Alma Place return of the building, topped by white-brick pedestals bearing carved stone finials. The corner and Alma Place finials appear to be stylised animals holding Duchy of Cornwall shields.

The east elevation – to Alma Place – is seven bays north to south. The upper floors of the northern-most bay are treated identically to the Fore Street elevation, although the ground floor is faced in granite ashlar. The upper floors are otherwise in a matching, if simpler, style with granite dressings to the windows. The second bay on the first floor has two framed panels instead of a window (this may have been intentional to house an advertisement) and the end bay is blind. The ground floor is granite rubble below a stone dog-tooth cornice, and has granite quoin window surrounds (the windows are blocked). Only one bay of the rear elevation is visible and comprises large loading windows with granite quoins on the upper floors, with a canopy for a hoist at eaves level.

At right angles to the rear elevation, and facing Alma Place, is a three-storey three-bay warehouse (9 Alma Place), constructed of granite rubble with granite quoins to the corners and window openings. The building has been converted and has C20 timber sash windows, and a modern shopfront at the ground floor. A canopy for a hoist survives at the centre at eaves level. The two buildings are joined by a single narrow bay with C20 windows and an alleyway entrance to the central courtyard.

INTERIOR: ground floor shop units altered. The upper floors have been converted to residential use.

History

In 1854 Samuel Trounson (1833-1904) and his brother Thomas (1840-1901), farmer’s sons from Cury on the Lizard, moved to Redruth and took over James Jenkins’ grocery shop on Fore Street on the east corner opposite the clock tower. In 1861 Samuel was recorded as a grocer, corn and flour dealer, whilst his brothers Thomas and Edward worked as grocer’s assistants. By 1881 Samuel was a wholesale and retail grocer and corn and flour factor, employing 19 men, six boys and four girls. The Trounsons became one of the leading middle-class families in Redruth. Devout Methodists, they were closely involved in the construction of the new Fore Street United Methodist Chapel in 1863, where Thomas Trounson also preached. The family were also on the temperance committee responsible for the building of the coffee tavern on Alma Place in 1880.

Plans for new premises for the Trounsons’ shop on the existing site were passed at a local board meeting in June 1869. It was announced in the Royal Cornwall Gazette that November that it would be ‘one of the finest and most handsome business premises in the county’, designed by a local architect, James Hicks.

James Hicks (1846-1896) was born in Redruth and lived in the town for his entire life. Trounsons’ new premises were probably his first architectural commission in the town. Another early commission, in 1870, was the remodelling of Tolvean on West End, Redruth for Alfred Lanyon, a prominent Redruthian who had amassed a fortune through investment in commercial, industrial and private buildings. Hicks’ relationship with businessmen and industrialists continued during his career, and for ten years he was the local agent of Lord Clinton. The bulk of Hicks’ work comprised public buildings including chapels and schools throughout Cornwall, but from the late-1870s he began to have an influence on the building stock, and the civil direction, of his hometown. In 1883 he acquired the lease for the nearby Carn Marth granite quarries from Lord Clinton and James Buller, forming the Cornish Granite and Freestone Company. The company took their fair share of new building contracts in Redruth, highlighting his interest in the wellbeing of the town. In 1894 Hicks became the first President of the Ratepayer’s Association and was a member of Redruth Urban District Council from 1895. Hicks’ architectural contribution to Redruth is evident in all its streets, but perhaps most in the group of buildings on Alma Place, constructed in 1880 when Redruth was flourishing as an economic and commercial centre. The Trounsons were influential in the widening of Alma Place, which undoubtedly made deliveries to their warehouse on Alma Place much easier.

Trounsons’ new premises seem to have been completed by June 1870, as it was reported in the local press that its height was obscuring the eastern face of the clock tower (the issue gained much publicity; it was subsequently raised by one storey in 1900). The contractors were Jenkin of Devonport, and the building reputedly cost £2,000. In 1890 the premises were extended by two bays to the east on the site of the Wellington Inn, again to a design by James Hicks. Trounsons flourished and the business became one of the largest wholesale and retail businesses in the county; the Fore Street premises were the main grocery store in the Redruth-Camborne area. The money earned by the family enabled them to open further shops in Redruth and Helston and a corn store in Truro, where they were prominent importers and merchants. At one-point Trounsons were the largest importers of saffron in the country.

Early C20 photographs show the ground floor with large arched windows to the main shop on the right, the entrance flanked by twisted iron columns. The window adverts note that the Trounsons were importers and general merchants, corn and flour factors, and they stocked molassine meal for horses as well as Mazawatte tea and Cadbury’s cocoa, sultanas, bacon and sardines. A slightly later photograph shows different shopfront glazing (as it survives today), the columns having been removed, a large gilded store name the width of the original building, and embossed brass sills to the windows with further advertising.

The Trounsons sold the business to Peek Frean biscuits in 1940. The building then was taken over by Woolworths in 1953 (store number 813); it closed in around 1987. At some point after this a pierced parapet between the brick piers on the roof was removed. In 2008 and 2011 the upper floors of the Fore Street and Alma Place buildings were converted into residential flats; the ground floors remain in use as commercial units.

Reasons for Listing

The former Trounsons' store and warehouse, on Fore Street and Alma Place, Redruth is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as a characterful example of the work of Redruth’s principal C19 architect, James Hicks;
* the Venetian Gothic architectural style of the building is a handsome presence on the corner of Fore Street and Alma Place.

Historic interest:

* as a significant component in the commercial building boom in Redruth, many buildings for which were designed by Hicks;
* for its association with one of the leading families in Redruth, who supported other new buildings in the town including the Lamb and Flag coffee tavern in 1880;

Group value:

* with the former Lamb and Flag coffee tavern and other buildings on Alma Place, designed by James Hicks between 1880 and 1882; and the clock tower, all of which are listed at Grade II.

External Links

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.