Former Dale Temperance Hotel And Coffee Tavern

A temperance hotel and coffee tavern built in 1880 for Thomas Bellamy Dale to designs by Frederick Holyoake Moore, ARIBA (1841-1924).

The building is constructed from red brick with terracotta detailing, under plain clay tile roofs. It is orientated east-west, with a four-bay range fronting the street and a narrow bay set back to the west housing the stair; a large five-bay range extends to the rear.

The building is of three storeys and a basement, with hipped roofs and tall gable-end stacks to the front range. The main elevation features bands of terracotta decoration in guilloche pattern marking the first and second floors, with floral decorative details to the window architraves. Round-arched doorways occupy either side of the ground floor; the western one has a moulded architrave with keystone. Above each doorway is a panel of terracotta decoration with moulded surround, depicting flowers in Arts and Crafts style. The ground and first floors have round-arched windows with decorative aprons and moulded architraves to the arches, all with mullions and transoms to the lower parts and multiple smaller panes to the arched sections. Those on the ground floor contain stained glass in yellow shades depicting flowers and birds. The second floor has rectangular-headed windows of similar pattern; terracotta panels reading COFFEE / TAVERN flank the second-floor windows on either side. The rear elevations are largely plain, with round-arched windows to the first floor and rectangular windows elsewhere, all set in plain reveals.

The interior retains part of its original lobby with round-arched glazed arcading immediately inside the entrance. The stair is a closed string with turned balusters and a moulded rail, with square-section newel posts with single flutes, pyramid knops and large ball finials. The principal rooms have been subdivided into office space, but the original moulded cornice remains largely intact, broken by later partitions; the round-arched windows have matching architraves; and the majority of the original fireplaces remain in situ. The former coffee room on the ground floor and the former club room on the first floor both have Arts and Crafts stone fireplaces with tile inserts by Minton, designed by John Moyr Smith, depicting scenes from Shakespeare and Tennyson's Idylls of the King.

Thomas Bellamy Dale (1809-1890) was a local manufacturer and philanthropist much concerned with charitable work and the improvement of living conditions within the city. Dale was a partner in George Nelson, Dale and Co, with his cousin George Nelson; the firm manufactured gelatine for use in the photographic process and supplied products to the home market as well as exporting to the United States. The site had been occupied by two houses until Dale bought it in 1879 and erected his Temperance Hotel and Coffee Tavern to provide teetotal entertainment as an alternative to the public houses widely blamed for causing drunkenness and ill-health amongst the working-class population. The facilities included a ground-floor bar and coffee room with service rooms to the rear; the first floor was largely occupied by a bagatelle and smoke room to the front, and a large committee and club room to the rear, capable of division by a folding partition. The second floor housed bedrooms for hotel guests. Frederick Holyoake Moore, a Warwick architect who lived in nearby Northgate Street, was responsible for the design.

After Dale's death in 1890, the building, still known as the Dale Temperance Hotel, continued in business as such until its purchase by Warwickshire County Council for £2550 in 1936, after which it was used as the Council's Staff Club. In the later twentieth century, the interior was partitioned internally to provide office space, which remained its use at the time of inspection in 2010.