Royal Clarence Restoration

BBC Radio Devon interviewed our Chairman Keith Lewis on 1st November 2016 about the possibility of salvaging our Blue Plaque to Franz Liszt which is on the front of the Royal Clarence Hotel. They are aware of the plaque and that we would like to retain it, but obviously this will depend on the demolition process and whether this can be done safely.

The Exeter Observer reported on 22 Sep 2023:

Royal Clarence Hotel rebuild finally granted planning permission.  Agreed developer contributions do not include planned education provision and may be significantly reduced after construction is complete.

Planning permission to rebuild the Royal Clarence Hotel as residential flats with ground floor commercial units has finally been granted nearly seven years after the hotel burnt down.

Exeter City Council approved the plans in October last year, but an extended 26 May deadline to sign a section 106 legal agreement requiring developer contributions to health, education and affordable housing elsewhere in the city was not met. Nor was another deadline of 14 July.

At a council meeting last night Labour councillor Emma Morse, who is responsible for development in Exeter, confirmed that the agreement the council signed with developer James Brent earlier this month did not include all the contributions stipulated by its planning committee last year.

[…]

As the hotel redevelopment plans do not include any affordable housing, a much larger sum of £2.175 million towards the provision of affordable housing elsewhere in Exeter was also included in the agreement.

However none of these sums will be finalised until three months after construction is complete, and will not become payable until all 23 planned residential units have been occupied.

They will then vary depending on final build costs and profit margins submitted to the council by the developer.

For the full article, see: https://exeterobserver.org/2023/09/22/royal-clarence-hotel-rebuild-finally-granted-planning-permission-developer-contributions-may-be-significantly-reduced-after-construction-complete/ 

Enquiring about the state of the Blue Plaque for Franz Liszt on the front of the hotel, Exeter Civic Society received a reply from Max Sayers, co-founder of  Nooko, who are redeveloping the Royal Clarence now. In early July, he wrote that blue plaque still remained and was in great condition. They would  carefully remove it when they were rendering and then would place it in the same position. He added that once the site was a bit safer it would be great to meet up and show you round what remained and what their plans were. We are waiting for the invite.

The ‘Planning Group’ of our society is pleased that the new developer Nooko is pressing ahead with preparatory work to redevelop this abandoned site, and to re-establish a building which will reinstate the grandeur of Cathedral Close. Our response is based on important comments submitted by respondees who are making reasonable suggestions to
improve the final development, and to help preserve what remains of these very historical, but damaged listed buildings.

We are grateful to Historic England, SPAB and Devon Buildings Group for their very informative responses to this application and description of the amount of historical building fabric that survived the fire, and their call for its preservation in-situ rather than its removal.

The subsequent revised proposals from Nooko are welcome, although we have concerns about the lack of detail provided for the Listed Building Compliance application, which provides no further information than the substantive planning application.

The revised planning drawings now propose retaining the surviving timber frame structure of 16-17 Cathedral Yard which we mostly refer to as the Well House buildings. The revised plans were submitted after significant objections from Historic England, The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, Devon Archaeological Society, and Devon Buildings Group to the removal of the Well House structure. We have concerns about the lack of detail relating to these listed buildings, how the new concrete structure will be supported by the remaining historical structure, and to the proposed met cladding of the rear of the new building.

For more details see our response under: https://exetercivicsociety.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/25-0895-FUL-Revised-Royal-Clarence-scheme.pdf

There had been a public event on 27 October where the Exeter historian Todd Gray had invited Nooko to report on their plans for the Royal Clarence. The meeting made clear how much could have been lost if it had not been for Todd Gray to inform the fire services when the fire occurred. The new developer now wants to sympathetically restore a building with as much authentic material and features as possible, though with a change of use.