Former 19th century tea room and legal offices at 8 The Broadway, Wickford (EHER 80091)

Demolished in 2019. A diminutive 19th century two-storey building with a hipped clay-tile roof and rear mid-19th century extension. The original function of the building seems to have been as a tea room. Later reuse as legal offices removed many original features and the building was relatively plain inside. It had access on both floors to 6 The Broadway.

March 2019. Level 1 building recording. 8 The Broadway is the surviving NE half of a semi-detached pair of cottages (the other half replaced by the bank at 6 The Broadway in 1910). Its form and construction suggest it was built c.1800. The building is a diminutive two-storey structure, faced with painted render (which has replaced the weather-boarding visible in early photos) and with a hipped, clay-tiled roof. It has a mid-19th century single-storey addition with slate roof to the rear. Its principal elevation faces NW towards The Broadway, where a later shopfront has been inserted. The building retains a number of timber sliding sash windows, and the rear addition has a canted bay to the SE. Internally, the layout of the building originally comprised a pair of heated rooms at both ground and first floor level. The ground floor has been modified with the addition of the rear extension and insertion of a partition, to form three rooms, while the first floor appears to retain its original layout. The stairs form a straight flight accessed from within the rear extension and have presumably been modified. The building is relatively plain having been modernised for later office use, with later finishes to its walls and removal of the majority of its fittings. Most recently, Nos. 2-8 The Broadway served as inter-connected offices of Brian Ruff, Angus& Jewers, solicitors, and No. 6 can be accessed from both floors. Tea Room The original function of the building is unclear; it may have been constructed as a dwelling and later converted to a tea room, it could have been both concurrently, or perhaps just the latter since its origin. In a late 19th/early 20th century photograph a sign fixed on the gateway to the premises can clearly be seen to read ‘luncheons & teas’. Shop A photograph from the late 1960s shows a sign on the NW side wall of No. 6 which reads ‘curtains and loose covers’, and perhaps relates to a shop housed in No. 8. <1> August 2019. Demolition. The building was demolished in August 2019 in advance of the construction of a new Aldi supermarket on the adjacent land. <2>