Building of the Month May 2022 - Goole Arcade, North Street and Victoria Street, Goole, East Yorkshire DN14 5PY

With a gracious nod across the North Sea to the red brick gables of Holland, the Arcade is one of several buildings in the town designed by Henry Bell Thorp. Thorp also designed the nearby Bank Chambers (now the East Riding Council Chambers), the only commercial building in Goole to make it into Pevsner.   

Constructed in red brick, the building was finely ornamented in terracotta, with even the ribs of the glazed roof of the Arcade being made of terracotta. Each of the entrance archways extend up through two storeys and are detailed in stone. 

The internal passageway which stretches between two of the main roads radiating from the central clocktower in Goole is lined with shop units.  It must once have been a sheltered and pleasant place to browse what was on offer, its glazed roof bringing light in from above.  Sadly, the internal shop fronts have been replaced, without planning consent, with a mock-Tudor pastiche and was to be the subject of enforcement action.   The ownership appears complicated which does not help matters and at some point in the past, some shop units have even appeared being advertised on Ebay.

The Arcade deserves to find a determined individual, or company, to restore this undoubted asset to its proper place in a proud town.