Workmen’s Dwellings 1-9 Looe Street and How Street, Plymouth

Architectural competition – first premium

Workmen’s Dwellings, Plymouth – The assessor (Mr. Charles Barry) appointed by the Plymouth Town Council to decide as to the merits of the plans submitted for workmen’s dwellings at How-street and Looe-street, Plymouth, has awarded the premiums as follows: Howe-street and Looe-street: first, Mr. Locke Worthington, Westminster; second, Messrs. Sanders and Lucas, Southampton; third, Mr. J. Archibald Lucas, Exeter. [Builder 29 July 1893 page 85]

ARTISANS’ DWELLINGS, PLYMOUTH - The Corporation of Plymouth appear to be taking a very unfair course towards the architect Mr. Locke Worthington, whose plans were selected in the competition for artisans' dwellings on the How-street and Looe-street area. Because it was found that the plans would have to be modified in execution, they propose to pass over the premiated architect and put the buildings into the hands of the Borough Surveyor—in other words, they make him a present of Mr. Worthington's scheme as the basis for an amended one of his own. This is most unfair to the architect, especially when we consider (what most official bodies do not know) that all plans, almost without exception, have to be modified in execution. [Builder 14 March 1896 page 238]

Reference        Builder 29 July 1893 page 85
Reference        Builder 14 March 1896 page 238
Reference        Pevsner: The Buildings of  England: North Devon: London: 1989-: pages 663 - 664

SX4854SW LOOE STREET, Barbican 740-1/62/12 (North side) 19/12/88 Nos.1-15
(Consecutive) Corporation Buildings and attached walls

Marked Nos 1-9 on OS map. Terrace of local authority flats. Completed 1898. Painted brick  walls, stone sills, concrete floors, stairs and landings; slate roofs with projecting eaves; clay  tile cresting and shaped finials; 7 gables with collared and arch-braced trusses Cover the  paired windows of 2 out of 3 fronts]; deep brick axial stacks with stepped cornices. Early  local authority housing, commemorated on plaque attached to Nos 115-131 (consec)  Vauxhall Street (qv); the houses are split horizontally by occupation, with extra access to  the upper floor. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys with houses stepping up the street; stepped corbelled  segmental arches over alternating paired and single 9/2 pane horned sash windows.  Ground floor has plinth and shaped string over openings with similar arches over similar  paired sashes alternating with paired doorways with plain segmental arches, but single  doorway at right and doorway of No.15 on return at left-hand end; tall overlights and  4-panel doors. Rear also unaltered and has dwarf boundary walls linked to series of flying  concrete staircases with steel balustrades up to landings and doorways with 4-pane  overlights and partly glazed doors, each flanked by sash and small light; similar  arrangement of windows and doors to ground floor. INTERIORS not inspected. SUBSIDIARY  FEATURES include brick walls to street frontage and walls and staircases described above.  Part of a complex of practically unaltered early local authority housing. (The Buildings of  England: Pevsner N: Devon: London: 1989-: 663 & 664).