Royal Kings Arms Hotel and 2-8 King Street

The Royal Kings Arms Hotel and 2-8 King Street is a hotel and shop, rebuilt in 1879 on its original site and altered in 1988. It was designed by Holtom and Connor in the Northern Renaissance style. The building is constructed of sandstone ashlar with ashlar dressings, and brick at the rear, with slate roofs and coped gables. It has a reversed L-shaped plan on the corner of Market Street and King Street, extending along both, with the main entrance on Market Street.

The Market Street facade is four storeys and an attic high, with five bays, including a slightly recessed three-bay centre. The ground floor is articulated by six Tuscan pilasters supporting an entablature that extends along both street facades. The central entrance has a round-arched doorway with hollow-chamfered banded rustication, flanked by pilasters with arabesque decoration and surmounted by a scrolled pediment. Windows in the upper floors have two, three, and two lights; those on the first floor have transoms and pediments (triangular to the sides, segmental in the centre). A niche is incorporated into the central light of the second-floor window and an inscription reads 'ESTABLISHED AD 1629 REBUILT AD 1879' on the third floor. Tall oriel windows illuminate double-height rooms in the outer bays of the upper storeys, each topped by a pedimented gable decorated with a niche containing an urn filled with plants - a motif repeated in all the gables.

The corner bay features a shop window extending one bay into Market Street and along the full King Street frontage on the ground floor. Above this are a round-headed French window with a balcony on the first floor, a blind aedicule on the third floor, and an open segmental pediment in front of a chimney.

The King Street facade is similar to the Market Street facade, but concave in plan; the end bays do not have oriel windows, although the right-hand one originally did.