The Volunteer Hotel

The Volunteer Hotel

This is a two-storey building with attic and basement, constructed in the neo-Jacobean style and built of red brick with applied timber framing and render. The roof is clad in tiles and slate, with a lead dome.

The building has an irregular plan with a sub-rectangular range to the front facing south-east and projections to the rear south. The front elevation comprises five bays, with gables to bays one, three and five increasing in size. Each gable incorporates applied timber framing and barge boards carved with national flowers: shamrocks for Ireland, thistles for Scotland and roses for England. Bay two features a lantern tower with gothic windows and a lead dome. Bay four has a stone porch with marble fluted pilasters, Composite capitals, ball finials and a triangulated pediment displaying the pub name and date. The porch retains its original panelled doors. A secondary recessed entrance under a segmental arch originally sat to the left between the canted bay windows but has been converted to an additional window.

The building displays a mixture of canted and rectangular bays, both single and double height, as well as multi-paned casements. Gothic window tracery containing stained glass survives throughout. The roof is clad in small red tiles with alternating strips of plain and fish-scale tiles to the front and south elevations, and plain and fish-scale slates to the rear. Clay ridge tiles are used throughout. Chimneys are substantial brick stacks. The north elevation of the front range is plain except for the corbelled gable, which incorporates applied timber framing with quatrefoils and carved barge boards. The south elevation is similar, save for a corbelled chimney stack and Tudor arch timber framing replacing the quatrefoils. The south elevation of the rear range is rendered with applied timber framing to the first floor. The rear elevation is largely plain except for smaller applied timber-framed gable ends.

The ground floor has been largely opened up, though plaster ceiling indications mark the original layout. The entrance porch features Art-Nouveau style dado tiling, now painted over. The bar occupies the middle of the main space and has been renewed. Evidence of mosaic flooring survives at the cellar entrance; original plans indicate it once extended to the hall. The wooden staircase to upper floors sits to the rear of the bar. This is an original closed-well stair with substantial square newels, panel balustrading and tiling to the wall, all now painted over.

The first floor contains a function room to the south, originally a billiard room, and current private quarters to the north, formerly hotel bedrooms and storerooms. A partition wall divides the private quarters from the public space at the landing, requiring removal of the stairwell balustrade panel on that side. Two large rooms to the north are separated by a panelled room divider framed by an opening with a large Tudor arch flanked by Doric pilasters. The former billiard room to the south has full-height wood panelling on all walls with a painted plaster frieze above depicting mythical creatures. The ceiling is plastered with a geometrical pattern surrounding a rectangular light well with wooden geometric tracery and stained glass depicting foliage and fish-scale patterns. A fireplace on the north wall incorporates a mirror flanked by Art-Nouveau wooden reliefs, a marble surround and tiles painted with foliage and butterflies; the grate is original. The opposite wall has a recessed niche housing the radiator. A wooden window seat occupies the east side.

The attic is reached by a straight-flight stair with turned balusters and contains numerous rooms, probably for staff housing and lower-standard hotel rooms. The main areas are decorated with anaglypta up to dado height. Most rooms have lost their fireplaces. Access to the tower is via a raised door off one of the rooms, leading to a small stair.

The cellars are extensive and appear partially to reuse structures from the previous public house on site. They incorporate a barrel drop, exits to the west and a blocked stair. Windows throughout the building are a mixture of sashes and casements with stained glass to the top lights; most are original.