Queen Hotel Including Former Stable Wing And Railings

Queen Hotel including former stable wing and railings

Hotel. Built in 1860, damaged by fire in 1861, and rebuilt to the same plan in 1862. The building is constructed in brick and stucco with a grey slate roof.

Exterior: The main hotel has a basement and four storeys. The Station Road frontage contains 11 windows with a hotel entrance, and the rounded corner has one window. The main block has 8 windows facing Station Road with a further 10 in the lower south wing facing City Road, which probably escaped fire damage. The basement has a quarry pavement to the area and rusticated facing with 6-pane recessed sashes and double service doors. A rusticated half-arch spanning the area carries a flight of 7 stone steps and landing to a projecting Corinthian-columned porch with double 2-panel doors in architrave. Ground floor windows were formerly 11-pane including round-arched fans but are now largely 2-pane, with ornate panels beneath, sillbands on consoles, ornate pilasters, and architraves with ornate keystones. A statue of Queen Victoria by Thornycroft stands above the porch. Rusticated quoins appear on each upper storey. The first floor has a tripartite sash in ornate case above the porch, a modillion floorband, and sillband on paired plinths beneath each now 2-pane sash in pedimented case. The second floor string has 2-pane sashes in segmental-arched openings with eared architraves, and a pair of sashes over the entrance with shouldered treatment. The third floor string has consoles and a modillion cornice with tall tripartite sashes in top-hamper to the entrance bay and similar windows to those of the second floor. Six ridge chimneys have moulded stucco caps with bold cornices. The rounded corner to City Road and Station Road has a tripartite sash to each storey and a wrought-iron bracket for a hanging sign. The City Road face has similar detailing to Station Road but includes an added or modified projecting porch to the bar lounge in Art Deco manner with stone steps to each side. The south wing has similar detailing but at a slightly smaller scale with less fine brickwork. The rear face to the hotel garden is consistent with the main building but more simply expressed.

The former stable wing, now containing ancillary rooms, links the hotel to the Railway Station on Station Road. It is one storey with a coach archway having simple jambs and segmental arch with rusticated voussoirs, architrave, frieze and cornice, and a hipped grey slate roof. Four bays to the right of the archway and two bays to the left have round-arched fixed lights of 6 and 4 panes plus 4 panes in fans, with sillband and impost-band. A flight of 7 quadrant steps leads to the corner entrance with the hotel, featuring a cast-iron railing and pilaster case to the replaced door, and a radial-bar semicircular window.

Interior: The hotel retains many original features. The hall has an ornate cornice and dado. The four-storey open-well stair has round cast-iron columns to the well, ornate cast-iron balustrade, curtail step with rose, stone steps and niches with statues. The reception hall has a marble floor. Doors throughout have classical cases with some of 4 fielded panels. The Garden Room contains columns and cornices. The Albert Room, giving onto the street corner, is largely intact with dado, panels above, fireplace, overmantel and ceiling cornice. The south wing has an oval geometrical stair through three storeys with open string, shaped brackets, rose, moulded balusters and swept rail.

Subsidiary features: Stone plinth and cast-iron spear railings to the area before both faces of the main block.

Historical note: When first built, the hotel had two tall viewing platforms constructed above the roof that residents could climb to obtain a panoramic view of the historic city. (For comparison, see the approximately contemporary Prospect House, High Street, Malpas.)