Royal Hotel And Owen House

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 30/06/2015

SD4761NE 1685-1/7/310

LANCASTER THURNHAM STREET (West side) Royal Hotel and Owen House (No. 6)

(Formerly listed as No.6 Royal Hotel (part))

GV II Includes: Royal Hotel GEORGE STREET. House, later dispensary and public house extension, now shop and bar. c1800 and c1900. For Viscount Fauconberg. Dressed sandstone in narrow courses with ashlar dressings. Slate roofs with coped gables. The original house has gable stacks and is of double-depth plan with a central doorway and a small rear extension to the right, probably for lavatories. 3 storeys above a basement expressed as a plinth, and 3 bays between raised quoins and below an eaves cornice. All the windows have plain surrounds and are sashed with glazing bars (12 or 9 panes), while those on the ground floor are tripartite, with 9:12:9 panes and flat-faced stone mullions. Above the doorway, which has a moulded architrave, is a now-blocked square niche under a cornice which once housed the Coade stone plaque of the Good Samaritan, now to be found above the doorway of the Royal Lancaster Infirmary, Ashton Road (qv). At the rear is a full-height square-headed staircase window, while on the right-hand gable there is another stair window, with a round head on the 2nd floor, presumably the servants' staircase. The left-hand (south) part was built as a public house c1900 and is of 3 storeys and 2 bays. The windows are sashed without glazing bars in stone surrounds and are paired on the 1st and 2nd floors. The 2nd floor windows have gablets over, and the ground and 1st floor windows have shaped hoodmoulds with carved rosettes. The left-hand window on the ground floor is tripartite and the right-hand window has been altered by the insertion of a door. At the right a moulded door surround is partly blocked and contains a window. The left-hand return wall to George Street is of 3 irregular bays, and a lower 2-storey wing continues towards the left. INTERIOR: the staircase at the back of the house has stick balusters and a ramped mahogany handrail. The second floor is now occupied by a single room with exposed roof trusses, which was apparently the women's ward when the building was used as a dispensary. HISTORY: built as the town house of Charles, Viscount Fauconberg (who died here in 1815) it became between 1832 and1906 the third home of the Lancaster Dispensary.

(Cross Fleury (pseud.): Time-Honoured Lancaster: Lancaster:1891-: 324).

Listing NGR: SD4782061509