The Irwin Memorial Hall

The Irwin Memorial Hall, Royal Leamington Spa

A hall with office range to the front, built around 1840, with later alterations and additions.

The building is constructed from pinkish-brown brick with a painted stucco front façade scored to imitate ashlar, under a Welsh slate roof. It is oriented east-west, with the front range facing east onto Kenilworth Street. The front range is single depth and contains a central entrance hall with principal rooms either side, and three rooms above served by paired staircases to the rear. The hall spaces to the rear are large, undivided rectangular spaces on two floors. A single-storey extension extends to the north.

The main elevation presents a three-bay, two-storey stuccoed range with a plinth. Tuscan pilasters mark the angles through ground and first floors, and flank the central first-floor window. The ground floor features a central entrance with six-panel double doors and a rectangular overlight, set in a surround of Tuscan pilasters with frieze and cornice. Ground-floor windows are one-over-one sashes with margin glazing; first-floor windows are two-over-four sashes with margin glazing. All front windows sit in plain reveals with sills and tooled architraves. The elevation is topped by a frieze, cornice, and blocking course with a central raised pediment. Paired stuccoed gable stacks rise above. The long rear hall range features high windows under segmental-headed brick openings. A twentieth-century flat-roofed brick extension adjoins an earlier single-storey extension to the north, probably originally a boiler house with a double-pitched slate roof.

Inside, the front range contains principal rooms flanking the central entrance hall, with paired dogleg staircases now replaced by twentieth-century examples. The ground-floor principal rooms retain parts of their original cornicing but have been converted to lavatories with mid-twentieth-century facilities. The rear hall is a single undivided rectangular space with mid-twentieth-century finishes. The first floor has three rooms within the front range, retaining original doorcasings and some cornices. The upper rear hall is similarly undivided with twentieth-century finishes and incorporates a raised stage area to the east opening directly onto the central front room. A suspended ceiling was inserted in the twentieth century. Original fireplace openings in the side walls have been sealed.

Kenilworth Street was laid out on a planned grid pattern around 1822–1826 by John Kempson, who was also working in Birmingham during this period. The building was constructed around 1840, possibly originally as a Methodist meeting hall. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1889 identifies it as the Albert Hall. The hall was owned and used by the Leamington Spa branch of the Royal British Legion from an early period until the early twenty-first century.