Carron Tea Rooms, 20 Cameron Street, Stonehaven, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

Entry Name: Carron Tea Rooms, 20 Cameron Street, Stonehaven

Listing Name: 20 Cameron Street, Carron Restaurant, Including Terraced Garden, Boundary Walls, Gatepiers and Gates

Listing Date: 4 July 1986

Category: B

Source: Historic Scotland

Source ID: 387918

Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB41605

Building Class: Cultural

Also known as: Stonehaven, 20 Cameron Street, Carron Tea Rooms

ID on this website: 200387918

Location: Stonehaven

County: Aberdeenshire

Town: Stonehaven

Electoral Ward: Stonehaven and Lower Deeside

Traditional County: Kincardineshire

Tagged with: Tea house

Description

Colonel Tawse and Messrs Hall, 1936; renovated 1999-2000 by Hall and Tawse. Tall single storey and basement, 3-bay, piend-roofed, Art Deco restaurant with bowed concrete-pillared loggia/verandah and bowed front comprising Art Deco glazing to large windows combining vertical and horizontal patterning with Deco symbols, set on terrace above period garden. Banded brick and reinforced concrete.

S (PRINCIPAL) ELEVATION: symmetrical. Double stair leading to loggia with Art Deco metalwork balustrade railing, centre bay of set-back face with large bow comprising narrow-centre 5-part full-height window with decoratively-astragalled top-lights, similarly-detailed 4-part windows to outer bays with outer lights as doors.

W ELEVATION: tall piended bay at centre with tall raised-centre 5-light window, flat-roofed loggia to right with later infill glazing, and lower piended bay to left with symmetrical glazing.

N (EVAN STREET) ELEVATION: listed separately as 26 to 34 Evan Street.

Metal framed windows with decoratively-astragalled glazing patterns to S combining vertical and horizontal patterning with Deco symbols; largely multi-pane glazing elsewhere. Grey slates.

INTERIOR: fine Art Deco interior comprising main apartment with vaulted ceiling, horizontal panelled walls incorporating some decorative metalwork panels, and counter with clock incorporated behind; E end wall with Art Deco engraved 'Picasso glass' mirror and tall curved mirrored supports (with lights?). Original light fittings. Toilets with original decorative floor and wall tiles and fittings. Wood floors reclaimed Aberdeen College of Commerce. Top-lit link corridor leading to N entrance (Evan Street).

TERRACED GARDEN, BOUNDARY WALLS, GATEPIERS AND GATES: rubble and brick terracing to ornamental garden, garden walls to street with period gate- and end-piers, ironwork archway incorporating name 'CARRON RESTAURANT' and boldly detailed wrought-iron gates.

Statement of Interest

Formerly listed as the 'Carron Tea Rooms', this unique Art Deco building has survived due to extensive and careful renovation. It is a fine example of Stonehaven's 1930s architecture, together with the separately listed Open Air Swimming Pool, during its heyday as a popular seaside resort. The interior detailing has been accurately restored using old photographs, to the extent of producing replica bowed back chairs. The elegant 'Picasso glass' mirror is insured for £150,000. Built by the Northern Co-Operative Society, the Tea Rooms were closed in 1968 and subsequently used as a store. The adjoining shops (now separately listed) to the rear (north), facing Evan Street, continued as Spar grocery stores until the late 1980s. It was during this time that McKean wrote 'a peculiarity of tearooms was that they were often attached to shops ' and thus had little architectural personality of their own'. However, he continues 'The Carron Tearoom in Stonehaven, pushed out into the garden as a rear extension of the Co-op, is a rare example in unused but good state of survival: bulbous brick bow, Art Deco glass and metal work, and a terrace. ' [it] has the finest Art Deco patterned glazing surviving (precariously) in Scotland. Purchased by the current (2006) owner in 1999, the restaurant has been restored and returned to almost original condition. Carron House situated to the NW has been converted from the former loading bay.

External Links

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