Ettington Park Hotel

Ettington Park Hotel, Shipston Road, Alderminster

A country house, now hotel. The building represents a significant remodelling of an earlier house, probably dating to the mid-17th century with mid-18th-century additions and interior alterations of 1824. The main works occurred between 1858 and 1862, designed by the architect John Prichard and incorporating 1824 work by Rickman and Hutchinson, commissioned by Evelyn Philip Shirley. Late 20th-century alterations and additions have been made.

The building is constructed of yellow and grey banded limestone ashlar with steeply pitched stone slate roofs. The roofs are hipped, gabled, conical and pyramidal, with cresting and stone ridges, lateral and internal stacks (some round). The plan is E-shaped with a rear wing and service wings to the left.

The east facade serves as the principal entrance and comprises two storeys plus an attic. A three-window main range with flanking wings and re-entrant turrets is linked by a seven-bay screen wall with a porte-cochere to the central entrance. Top cornices and coped parapets feature blind quatrefoils. The porte-cochere has diagonal buttresses flanking the arch and a crenellated parapet. The screen walls contain arches with enriched hoods and two-light plate tracery with wrought-iron grilles; these walls feature a cornice with dog-tooth and a pierced parapet. Windows are predominantly two and three-light mullioned; those to the top floor have trefoil-headed lights in gabled half-dormers, with the central dormer displaying relief carving to its tympanum. A turret to the left has a circular upper half carried on broaches and a conical roof. A square turret to the right features two-light trefoil-headed windows with plate tracery to the upper stage, beneath a cornice and pyramid roof.

The wing to the left has a hipped roof and a two-storey bow window with three trefoil-headed first-floor windows over relief panels. The wing to the right has a full-height canted bay window with similar details and a richly carved cornice to its hipped roof; the ground-floor window features colonnettes supporting a three-light opening, with a richly carved deep cornice on shafts.

The left return features a bowed projection with a buttress and window; three two-light gabled dormers, one positioned over the service wing with banding and buttresses. Behind the facade is 20th-century rebuilding. The three-window right return has two-light windows and gabled dormers; at its right end stands a three-storey canted bay window with roundels over cusped lights and statues in niches to the cants, beneath a pavilion roof.

The rear of the wing contains a pointed window with stained glass to the ground floor, three trefoil-headed windows to the first floor, and a rose window under a Florentine arch to the gable (which has an end stack and stack to the projection). To the right is a gabled porch with a cusped arch on columns and two pointed lights above. A projecting wing extends to the right, its left return containing a two-window range with a gable over a two-storey canted bay window with a hipped stone roof. A projecting gabled bay adjoins, featuring a three-light ground-floor window with carved shields above, deep brackets supporting a first-floor balcony, and a two-light window with relief carving to its tympanum and a two-light gable window. The end contains two stacks and a chapel with a canted end, steep roof, and two-light windows; a frieze with inlaid lettering and coped parapet. The remainder of the rear range features sash windows and an attached 20th-century rear wing.

The service range to the right end has a pierced parapet and windows with shouldered lintels over six-light sashes. A large external stack with offsets is positioned here. At the end is a tower with a carriage entrance under a three-centred head and a string course raised over an inscription panel; the top has a crenellated parapet. A single-storey 20th-century range adjoins to the right. Relief panels over the ground-floor windows to the main facades were executed by Edward Clarke to designs by Henry Hugh Armstead and illustrate the Shirley family history.

Interior features include an entrance hall with a rich chimneypiece dated 1857 and an arcade to the staircase hall. The dining room retains a 15th or 16th-century doorway, 18th-century inlaid teak and walnut panelling, and a late 18th-century chimneypiece. The library incorporates 1824 remodelling comprising an ogee-arched and traceried doorway, a chimneypiece incorporating a two-light window copied from one at Windsor, a cornice with Tudor flower and ribbed ceiling with pendants, and traceried bookcases. The drawing room features a 19th-century beamed ceiling and fireplace. The gallery contains 1860s bookcases and stained glass. A room to the south contains an overmantel relief depicting the signing of the warrant for the arrest of John Wilkes and others in 1763. The chapel retains some remains of murals and stained glass.

This is described as the most important and impressive High Victorian house in the county.