Lowther Hotel

A hotel and former centre of corporate and civic administration, built 1824-26 with later alterations. Constructed for Sir Edward Banks of the contracting firm Joliffe & Banks, with the architect possibly being William Hurst of Woodhead and Hurst of Doncaster.

Materials and Construction

The building is constructed of fine red stock brick laid in Flemish bond, with English Garden Wall bond to the rear. It features sandstone ashlar dressings and a slate roof. The lower half of the ground floor to the east and south is rendered. The windows are single-glazed timber sashes, mainly modern reinstatements.

Layout

The three-storey principal block has a double-pile plan with a central entrance leading to a central transverse stair hall. The staircase is positioned to the right (south), rising to a broad first-floor landing. On the first floor at the front, there is a suite of three interconnected rooms linked by double doors. To the north of the principal block stands a single-storey extension housing a public bar fronting onto Adam Street. Extending to the rear along Adam Street is a two-storey service range that fronts onto the courtyard behind the hotel.

Exterior

East (Aire Street) Elevation

The principal block presents a symmetrical arrangement of 2-3-2 bays, with the three central bays being slightly narrower and projecting slightly forward. These are topped by a projecting ashlar parapet with a narrow ashlar band below. The parapet, which steps up to the centre, largely conceals the shallow pitched roof with its brick ridge stacks. At the centre of the elevation stands a projecting flat-roofed ashlar porch supported by paired square columns with similar paired pilasters flanking the entrance. Access to the porch roof is provided by a set of tall French doors with margin glazing, framed with an ashlar architrave and protected by a triangular pediment supported by consoles.

The other windows are multi-paned sashes: 6-over-6 to the ground and first floors, and shorter 3-over-3 to the second floor, all with cambered arches of gauged bricks. The first floor has a projecting sill band, while windows on other floors have thinner projecting stone sills. The single-storey extension to the left is set back as a single bay with a stepped coped parapet with cornice. It contains a tripartite multi-paned sash window set beneath a cambered arch of gauged bricks.

South Elevation

Three bays fronting onto Banks Terrace are detailed similarly to the front elevation, but with the central first-floor window architraved and protected by a flat hood supported by consoles. The south elevation of the rear service range comprises three bays, continued with a further two bays to the east that are lower but still two storeys. The lower section is a former carriage house and appears to have been truncated to the east with the loss of at least one bay. The two surviving carriage openings are formed from substantial stonework with joggled flat arched lintels and segmental brick relieving arches above. The first-floor openings have segmental brick arches. The openings in the taller section have cambered arches in brick, with first-floor windows being 2-over-2 sashes and ground-floor windows being taller 4-over-4 sashes.

Rear Elevation

The rear elevation lacks decorative bands and the parapet has plain coping. Windows have stone sills and plain lintels. At the centre of the ground floor is an enlarged opening with a segmental brick arch covered by a later canted bay constructed in timber with a central doorway.

North (Adam Street) Elevation

The north elevation of the main block is detailed similarly to the rear but with more scattered fenestration and a projecting shaft originally designed for sanitary facilities. The ground-floor extension is in Flemish bond topped by a corniced parapet. It retains its ornate timber shopfront of five segmental-headed lights flanked by double doors with large segmental overlights, all topped by an entablature with an ornate cornice. The doors are six-panelled and framed by pilasters supporting elaborate pedimented brackets.

The service range to the east is utilitarian in design with a pitched roof without parapets. Windows are generally 4-pane sashes in openings with brick cambered arches.

Interior

The entrance and stair hall features an encaustic tile floor with a geometric design. The principal staircase is cantilevered with an open string, featuring a wreathed handrail supported on thin turned balusters, starting with a curtail and serving both upper floors. The hall and landings are subdivided by broad basket arches with panelled soffits supported by pilasters.

The ground floor has undergone some alteration to its plan form, with the northern front reception room opened up to the former public bar fronting onto Adam Street, and two of the rear reception rooms knocked through.

The first-floor layout remains unaltered. It includes a suite of three rooms at the front of the hotel, interconnected by double doors. These three rooms retain a complete decorative scheme of wall paintings thought to date to 1828-30, painted by Mr Bromley, a Shipping Agent, Master Mariner and Mural Painter.

The northern room features a full-colour mural of Goole docks covering the east wall, with monochrome designs on the other walls including a wreathed medallion portrait of Sir John Lowther on the chimney breast and a second medallion between the two west windows marking the opening of the Goole and Knottingley canal in 1826. The central room, a lobby which also opens onto the balcony, has similar monochrome decoration. The larger southern room also has a complete decorative scheme, including two full-colour murals flanking the chimney breast on the east wall depicting further scenes of the docks. The chimney breast itself carries a wreathed medallion portrait of King George IV.

The principal block has a full cellar divided into brick vaults to the rear (one thought to have initially served as a bonded warehouse) and divided into a series of rooms to the front with the joists of the first floor exposed in the ceiling.

Historical Context

The history of the Lowther Hotel is intimately bound up with the history of the Port of Goole, which was developed as a company town by the Aire & Calder Navigation Company from the 1820s onwards. Goole was the largest, most ambitious, and until the 1920s at least, the most successful of the new ports established by various canal companies nationally (such as Runcorn, Stourport and Ellesmere Port).

The hotel was the first permanent building to be completed in the new town, started in 1824 and open for business before the opening of the Knottingley and Goole Canal in 1826. It was built for Sir Edward Banks of Joliffe and Banks (the constructing contractors for the first docks) and was initially called the Banks Hotel. It was sold to the Aire & Calder in 1828 and renamed following the death of the company chairman Sir John Lowther around 1836.

The principal suite of rooms on the first floor was used by the Aire & Calder for board meetings until the 1950s. This practice of using a public building rather than purpose-built offices was typical in the early 19th century, even for companies as large and significant as the Aire & Calder, sometimes jokingly referred to as the "Fourth Estate of the Realm".

The wall paintings in the first-floor suite are thought to date to before the death of King George IV (1830), yet depict buildings that were built at a later date, suggesting that one purpose of the murals was as a prospectus for potential investors in the new port.

The Aire & Calder Navigation Company effectively acted as the local authority for Goole, operating out of the Lowther Hotel, which served as the town's principal civic building for much of the 19th century, including the use of one of its cellars as the town lock-up. The company's control over the town only started to be eroded in 1875 following the establishment of an independent Board of Sanitation.

The Lowther also acted as a Customs House for a time following the opening of the port to foreign trade in 1828, using one of the cellars as a bonded warehouse until the construction of a purpose-built Customs House in the 1830s. As is typical of commercial buildings, the Lowther underwent later development such as the addition of a public bar fronting onto Adam Street. The Lowther also featured in various local historical events, such as being the focus of rioting on General Election day in 1880 and being one of the buildings in the town damaged in a Zeppelin raid in 1915.