Victorian Torquay villas could become flats

It's to help meet housing needs

A hotel which was once one of the original Victorian villas of St Marychurch in Torquay could be demolished to make way for apartments.

Developers have filed an application with Torbay Council for 14 flats on the site of the former Seabury Hotel in Manor Road. Applicants 8 Tech Homes of Exeter say the development will provide high quality and much-needed housing.

The former hotel is a villa which dates from the middle of the nineteenth century but has had a number of extensions added.

A proposal for 12 apartments incorporating the original building was approved in March last year, but proved unviable because the core building would have needed so much reconstruction.

An alternative scheme to demolish the existing hotel and construct a new building was withdrawn last October partly because of concerns from Historic England over the loss of the original building and the scale and mass of the replacement.

Now the proposal has been revised, with the number of apartments cut from 21 to 14, a reduction in height across the site and an amended design to reflect details of the existing villa.

Developers say that while the property is located in the St Marychurch conservation area, the building itself doesn’t have any special historic significance or heritage value.

They say it will bring back a vacant brownfield site into appropriate use.

“The demolition of the existing building is justified and proportionate to its relative significance and contribution to the significance of the conservation area,” they say. “The replacement building will create a more sympathetic development in this location than can be achieved through the retention and extension of the existing villa.”

The new application has just been lodged with Torbay Council and public consultation has begun.

One comment posted on the council’s website says: “The proposal is pleasant enough. However in seeking to demolish the existing Victorian villa they appear to want to ignore the fact that this is one of the original villas that started the growth of St Marychurch.

“We simply can not afford to keep losing these quality Victorian buildings, especially when they are an integral part of the conservation area.”