Monday 7 April 2008

The Clock Tower and The Queens Hotel

This is on the Harbour side in Torquay, the centre of the English Riviera and the site of two of Torquay's most famous land marks, The Clock Tower and The Queens Hotel.

The Clock Tower you can see, the Queens Hotel you can't. The Queens has been empty and the building deteriorating for some years now. The owner wants to turn it from a hotel to holiday apartments but the local council were reluctant to grant planing permission. So the owner did nothing and the building became an eyesore. Now it is covered with plastic sheeting, not to protect any builders from the weather or passers by from falling materials but to make it look nicer. If you come down on holiday it will look like building work is about to start but for those of us who live here it will look like this for months or even years yet. The nature of the eyesore has changed but is still there.

Scaffolding by ISCA

6 comments:

Unknown said...

You'd have thought in this day and age there would be nicer scaffold sheeting around. For example, sheeting which makes up an image of a skyscape...or a beach or something nice like that.

Lord Hutton said...

If that is what will keep the building alive then apartments sound good. I have been in there, it is lovely

Dave Hill said...

Thanks for the Virus alert Dave, what is wrong with people sending a virus on Blogger.

Good picture by the way and all your info is spot on..

Unknown said...

In the 20 years I've lived in Torquay..I didn't know The Queens was derelict. I just thought it was a crap hotel. A good job has been done so far in rejuvenating the harbor area...this can only be a good thing.

Failing that a nice subterranean bypass down Fleet Walk with a bus stop halfway down? Or maybe that is a bit far fetched?

David said...

At the moment the council are paying for the sheeting and as a council tax payer plain is fine by me.

A tunnel under Fleet Street? We already have one but it gets full of water when it rains.

West said...

...I suppose David you've had swarms of von Daniken's visiting, doing little drawings of the 'spaceship' disguised as a 'clock tower'...?

Any excuse, that lot...

Looks more like Thunderbird 1 to me...

xxx
Bob