Old Assembly Room

OLD ASSEMBLY ROOM, WORCESTER

Assembly rooms with originally coach house and stables below, situated on Shaw Street. Built circa 1749, attached to the Hop Pole Hotel (which relocated in 1840), with major alterations made in 1840 when a new entrance was formed on the south side and a staircase inserted. Probable later 19th-century additions include a stack and infilling of the ground floor. Comprehensive restorations by Nick Joyce took place in 1994–95.

The building is constructed of brick at ground floor and to the upper north and east elevations. The first floor is otherwise timber-framed to the south and east, with pebble-dash render applied onto timber lath on the south side and weather-boarding to the west. It features a timber cornice and ashlar imposts, a plain tile roof, and a truncated external stack positioned at the left.

The ground floor presents a round-arched arcade with an off-centre right single-storey porch. The first floor comprises a single jettied room. The building is two storeys with six first-floor windows. The ground floor contains four round-arched openings with imposts, a fifth opening now blocked with a segmental arch containing a four-panel door, a brick buttress, and a further segmental-arched opening now partly blocked. The prominent jetty is articulated by an external moulded band. The first floor features six-over-six sash windows and two Venetian windows, each Venetian window with a central six-over-six sash with radial glazing bars to the head flanked by four-over-four sashes; all windows sit in flush frames. A modillion cornice runs across the façade.

The assembly room interior measures approximately 19 by 6 metres (60 by 20 feet) and is lined throughout with heavy, rich bolection-moulded panelling above a moulded dado rail. The panelling is divided into bays by fluted Doric pilasters surmounted by a renewed continuous frieze and cornice with deep coving. The north wall features two projecting chimneypieces flanked by Doric pilasters. The westernmost fireplace is blocked; the easternmost chimneypiece displays bold egg-and-flower moulding, a frieze and cornice with an eared and shouldered overmantel bearing a broken pediment, and a grate decorated with pineapple motifs. An inserted timber staircase apparently replaces a Victorian staircase that stood between the fireplaces. The south wall is punctuated by fenestration which interrupts the dado rail, with pilasters flanking the Venetian windows. The east and west ends of the room feature similar entrances. The west-end doors are designed such that they would never open fully; the east-end entrance is restored but now blind. Double round-arched doors at the west end have upper glazing with thick glazing bars and contemporary 'Vauxhall' mirror plates in moulded architraves on pilaster responds with corbel keystones. Both entrances are surrounded by paired Ionic pilasters and modillion pediments, with the west entrance remaining open. The west end originally incorporated a musicians' gallery hidden behind the panelling, which hinged outwards. Several balusters and the decoratively moulded handrail (plain on the reverse side) survive internally, though the external platform no longer exists. This gallery measures 3.2 metres in width and is positioned centrally between the two pilasters. The upper part of the panelling over the gallery was designed to hinge upwards into the gallery space, whilst two leaves over the handrail were intended to lift out, allowing the gallery to be concealed when not in use.

The ground floor retains a fireplace beneath the westernmost chimneypiece on the north wall, featuring an elliptical arch and cast-iron grate. A further inserted fireplace at the west end has a plain surround and keystone.

The original date of the assembly rooms remains unknown, though the structure was attached to the Hop Pole Hotel, completed in 1749. Assemblies were documented as being held here by 1757, when Berrows Worcester Journal referred to it as 'the Great-Room at the Hop-Pole'. Access to the assembly room was initially at first-floor level only, gained via an anteroom from the east end, now probably incorporated into the present attached brick structure. The 1840 alterations were necessitated by the relocation of the former Hop Pole Hotel to a site opposite. The 'History of Worcester' (1816) notes that public and private concerns were held principally at the Hop Pole Inn, "where there is a large and commodious room purposely appropriated for such amusements", alongside the Theatre, Library, and Assemblies at the Guild Hall under the patronage of the Nobility and Gentry.

The musicians' gallery was uncovered during the 1994–95 restorations when the west end stack was dismantled. Any further evidence of the gallery had evidently been removed during the 19th century. A similar arrangement survives at the Royal Oak Hotel Assembly Rooms on South Street, Leominster.

This is among the finest mid-18th-century inn assembly rooms surviving in England. It forms a group with Berkeley's Hospital on The Foregate and with Nos 3 and 4 Shaw Street.