Salem Chapel

The history of this building, in Fleet Street Torquay, goes back to 1839 when it was built by Robert Stark as the Salem Chapel and it served as the church of a religious sect known as the Starkites. A few years after the death of their leader Robert Stark who ministered here until 1854 the Salem Chapel closed.

Ten years after Robert Stark's death the chapel was converted into the School of Science and Art and in 1887 it became the Vivian Institute, as a memorial to Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. Its founder Edward Vivian was the first treasurer of the Torquay Natural History Society, a banker, magistrate, artist and editor of the Torquay Directory. He set up the Vivian Institute to tackle one of the problems he believed the working classes faced - the lack of educational opportunity. By paying 2 shillings a month working men received three two-hour lessons a week in carpentry, joinery, painting, stonemasonry or turning.

In 1918 the building was transformed into the School of Arts and Crafts and later it became the Torquay branch of the South Devon Technical College School of Art, the other two being at Paignton and Newton Abbot.