Bygones
Bygones fills three floors of the old Tudor Cinema on Fore Street. It began in 1987 with a collection of railway relics, and now includes a life-size Victorian street.
Learn more about Bygones on Google MapsFitted Wardrobes In St Marychurch
Is the back bedroom of your St Marychurch cottage too small for a wardrobe and a bed?
Compact fitted wardrobes for two-up two-down terraces around Park Road and Western Road, and flats above the precinct
The terraces north of St Marychurch's centre were built between about 1850 and 1880 for quarrymen and marble polishers, and later for workers at the Watcombe terracotta works. Nobody in those houses owned much, and the bedrooms show it: small, square-ish, with a chimney breast and a door that opens straight into the space where you would put a wardrobe. Around Park Road, Western Road, Compton Place and Lummaton Place, a freestanding wardrobe often blocks the bed or the window. We build fitted wardrobes for these St Marychurch cottages that sit in the recesses, keep the door swing clear and come up the narrow stair in pieces, all made at our Barton workshop.
Measure My St Marychurch Bedroom
Tell us roughly what you have in mind and we will arrange a time to come and measure. A photo of the space on your phone is usually enough to start with.
The Joiner Behind It
Compact wardrobes for quarrymen's terraces
The terraces north of St Marychurch's centre were built for quarrymen and marble polishers. Bedrooms are small and square-ish, so a wardrobe has to give a lot of storage without crowding.
Luke has worked with timber since childhood, and it's in his family. Getting real capacity into a small room is something you learn job by job rather than from a course. He and the team make every millimetre count.
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St Marychurch
Workers' cottages and flats over the shops
St Marychurch grew on the back of its quarries, which cut limestone between Barton and Petitor and sold the polished stone as Devon marble. The cottages built for the people who worked it are rendered over stone, with walls thick enough to give every window a deep reveal. Upstairs, two bedrooms usually share the floor, and the smaller one at the back can be barely wider than a double bed. In a room like that, every centimetre of wall is worth planning. A shallow wardrobe in one recess and shelves in the other can be the difference between a usable room and a box room.
The other group of homes here are the flats above the shops on Fore Street, many in Victorian buildings that kept their upper storeys when the shopfronts below were changed. Those rooms are often taller than the cottage bedrooms, but awkwardly shaped. If you are also thinking about the windows, our page on timber windows and doors in St Marychurch covers sashes for the terraces and the upper floors of the precinct.
The Case For It
Fitted wardrobes that suit St Marychurch's small rooms
Shallow where space is tight
Front-facing rails let a wardrobe work at around 400mm deep instead of 600mm, which leaves room to walk past the bed.
Built into the recesses
The alcoves beside the chimney breast become cupboards, so the wardrobe takes no extra floor space at all.
Doors planned round the door
Where the bedroom door opens towards the wardrobe, we use narrower leaves or bi-fold doors so they do not clash.
Made to get up the stair
Cottage stairs here are steep and tight. Every carcass is sized to go up them and be put together in the room.
Fixed into solid stone
Rendered stone walls take a good fixing once you get through the plaster, so the wardrobe stays firm for years.
Plain doors for plain houses
Simple four-panel or flat painted doors suit these modest terraces better than anything ornate.
Before You Choose
Choosing a wardrobe for a small St Marychurch bedroom
Ask what depth the maker is proposing and why. In a narrow back bedroom, a standard 600mm wardrobe can leave a gap too small to walk through. A thoughtful maker will offer a shallower option with front-facing hanging.
Think hard about how the doors open against the room door, the bed and the window. In these cottages all three tend to be close together, and the wrong door style can make a new wardrobe harder to use than no wardrobe.
Ask how the wardrobe will get up the stairs. If the answer is that it comes assembled, measure the stair yourself first. Our main fitted wardrobes page explains how we plan interiors once the size is settled.
Compared
Storage choices for a St Marychurch cottage bedroom
These four options are what most owners of small terraced houses in St Marychurch consider. The comparison assumes a narrow back bedroom.
| Shallow fitted wardrobe | Recess cupboards only | Standard-depth fitted wardrobe | Freestanding wardrobe | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Floor space lost | About 400mm on one wall | None | About 600mm on one wall | 600mm or more |
| Hanging capacity | Good | Moderate | Highest | Moderate |
| Gets up a steep stair | In sections | In sections | In sections | Often not |
| Room still feels open | Yes | Yes | Less so | Least |
| Suits plain terrace style | Yes | Yes | Yes | Depends |
| Relative cost | Lower middle | Lowest fitted option | Middle | Lowest |
Our Process
Building a wardrobe for a St Marychurch terrace
Seven steps take a St Marychurch wardrobe from survey to fitted. In a small cottage the survey is quick, but the planning needs care.
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Measuring room and stair
Room dimensions, recess widths and depths, door swings, and the width and turn of the stair.
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Choosing the depth
We agree whether the wardrobe should be full depth or shallow, based on how much floor you can spare.
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Drawing it out
A plan showing the wardrobe, bed, door and window together, so you can see the room still works.
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Settling the materials
Boards and timber condition in the workshop before cutting, which keeps doors flat in a warm bedroom.
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Workshop build
Made in sections at Barton and assembled on the bench to check every fit.
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Paint applied off site
Finished before delivery, with a little touching-up on site after scribing.
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Carried up and fitted
Sections come up the stair, go together in the room and are scribed to the wall. We check back once the heating season is over.
Reassurance
What We Stand Behind
- Timber moved before it was cut
- Boards come into the workshop and sit there before anything is machined. Cutting a wide oak panel on the day it arrives is how you end up with a door that has cupped by Easter. In a bay where spring humidity runs high, that waiting period is not optional.
- Scribed to your walls, not shimmed to them
- Older Torquay walls are rarely square and almost never plumb. Every fitted piece is scribed to the actual surface on site. If you can see daylight behind a filler strip, the job was measured once and hoped over.
- Ironmongery rated for the job it is doing
- A drawer in a holiday flat gets pulled open forty times a week in August. We fit runners and hinges specified for that, and we tell you which ones we used, so in eight years you can buy the same part rather than replacing a whole unit.
- If it moves, we come back
- Solid timber is a material that responds to the room it lives in, and occasionally something needs easing in its first year. That visit is part of the job, not a callout. Say so and we will book it.
Budget
Fitted wardrobe prices in St Marychurch
£2,500 – £12,000
typical fitted wardrobe run
St Marychurch wardrobes tend to sit at the lower end of our range because the rooms are small. A pair of recess cupboards in a cottage bedroom is one of the more affordable jobs we do. Flats above the shops on Fore Street can cost more where ceilings are high or rooms are irregular. See the joinery cost guide for ranges.
Guide range only, VAT included. Your figure comes from the measured visit and the drawing you sign off.
What moves the priceNo stopping in the precinct
Flats over Fore Street shops cannot be reached by van, so we carry from the nearest access point. Terraces on Park Road and Western Road are easier.
Size of the room
A small cottage bedroom needs less material and a shorter fitting day, which keeps the price down.
Shallow designs
Front-facing rails and shallower carcasses cost about the same as standard ones, but save floor space.
Questions
St Marychurch wardrobe questions
- Do I need permission for a fitted wardrobe in a St Marychurch house?
- Not for an ordinary terraced house. The St Marychurch conservation area, managed by Torbay Council, mainly covers the outside of buildings. A listed building, such as the group at Park Crescent, is different: fixed joinery inside it can need listed building consent. Flats may also need the freeholder's agreement. The council sets out the rules in its guide to listed building consent in Torbay.
- Will a wardrobe fit in the back bedroom of my St Marychurch cottage?
- Usually, if it is designed for the room. A shallow wardrobe with front-facing rails, or cupboards built into the recesses, can fit where a standard wardrobe would not.
- Are stone walls a problem for damp behind a wardrobe?
- Rendered stone walls can be cool, especially on the outside wall. We seal the back of the wardrobe and leave a small gap for air if there is any sign of damp.
- Can you fit wardrobes in a flat above a Fore Street shop?
- Yes. We carry the sections from the nearest access point and fit them in the room. The higher ceilings in some of those flats allow top cupboards too.
- What door style suits a quarry workers' terrace?
- Simple painted doors, either flat or with four panels to match the room door. These were plain houses, and plain joinery looks most at home.
- How long does the job take?
- Allow six to nine weeks for making. Fitting a cottage wardrobe usually takes less than a day.
Feedback
What Customers Say
Rated 5 out of 5
“Our bedroom is in one of the old Warberries villas and the back wall bows by about an inch and a half across four metres. Two national firms measured it, quoted, then went quiet. These came, measured, and said it needed scribing rather than filling. The wardrobes go right into the corner and there is no gap anywhere. My husband keeps running his hand down the join.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“We run a bar on the harbourside and needed the counter and back fittings replaced without losing a summer weekend. They built the lot off site, came in on a Sunday night and had us trading by Tuesday lunchtime. Knowing the whole thing was made before they ever shut our doors is what sold it.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“Sash windows on the front elevation, and we are in a conservation area so it had to be timber and it had to match. They took a profile off the original, made new boxes in accoya, and the planning side went through without a query. From the pavement you genuinely cannot tell which is which.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“Two alcoves either side of the chimney, and they turned out to be 40mm different in width, which explains why the flat-pack ones we tried first never sat right. Made as a pair but to two different sets of measurements. Small thing, but it is the difference between looking fitted and looking bought.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“We let our place out over the season so everything gets hammered. I asked them to over-specify the drawer runners and they did, and told me exactly which ones so I can order spares. Three summers in, nothing has sagged. The last kitchen we had did not last two.”
Local
What To Do In St Marychurch
Even in a small district like St Marychurch there is plenty to see. Three places within easy reach of Fore Street:
Babbacombe Cliff Railway and Oddicombe Beach
The cliff railway has run down to Oddicombe since 1926, apart from a wartime closure until 1951. The beach below has cafés and huts beneath red cliffs.
Learn more about Babbacombe Cliff Railway and Oddicombe Beach on Google Maps
St Mary the Virgin parish church
The parish church was hit by a German raid in May 1943 during Sunday school. Rebuilt in the 1950s, it kept its carved Norman font.
Learn more about St Mary the Virgin parish church on Google MapsSt Marychurch On The Map
Coverage
Areas We Cover
St Marychurch sits close to our Barton workshop. We cover all of these districts and towns too.
Across Torquay
- Wellswood
- The Warberries
- The Lincombes
- Chelston
- Babbacombe
- St Marychurch
- Cockington
- Shiphay
- Torre
- Ellacombe
- Livermead
- Maidencombe
And across South Devon
Or go straight to a service
Make the small bedroom work
Send us the room size and a photo of the wall you want to use. We will visit, measure the stair as well and send you a drawing and a price.