Booth Hall Hotel

HEREFORD

SO5139NW EAST STREET 683-1/7/155 (North side) 10/06/52 Booth Hall Hotel

GV II*

Hotel. C18 and C19, with C15 wing, much altered, to north. MATERIALS: painted brick; hipped composite tile roof; 2 brick ridge stacks; brick stack to front. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys and cellar; 5-window range: C20, 6/6 and 1, 8/8, sashes, under segmental arches; parapet. Entrance to centre right: late C19, 2-leaf 4-panel door, and lattice glazed overlight, in moulded architrave under moulded hood on scrolled consoles; C20, 8/8 sash, to right; two C20, 6/6 sashes and part-glazed door, to left; segmental arches; storeyband. Left returned side: 2 early C20, 6/6 sashes to 1st and 2nd floors; similar sash and blocked opening, to ground floor; all under segmental arches; returned storeyband. Wing to right: timber-frame and plaster; plain tile roof; C20 stack to rear. INTERIOR: 1st floor hall: ceiling has cusped quatrefoil windbraces; C15 hammerbeam roof with carved spandrels and figureheads; pierced and moulded screen. Victorian Gothic screens, balcony, doors, panelling, fireplace with overmantel, leaded lights and staircase. HISTORY: The hall is thought to have been built between 1380 and 1400 and is said to be mentioned in a deed of 1392. In 1392 the building was acquired by the City by licence from the King because they had no place in which the Sessions of the Justices of Assize or of the Peace or the Pleas of the City might be held. It seems to have been used by the Mercers Company for their Guild Room from C16 until at least 1756. The basement was used as a freemen's prison. The building finally became an inn at the end of C18 or beginning of C19, and the Great Room was lost sight of in later alterations until the collapse of a chimney in 1919 revealed the presence of the carved roof. A former landlord is mentioned in Borrow's Lavengro. (Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club: 1981-: 165-170; Proceedings of the Woolhope Club: 1919-1921; RCHME).

Listing NGR: SO5106639998