'Unicorn' With Entrance To Crowngate Centre

This is a hotel, now used as shops and offices, and also serving as an entrance to the Crowngate Centre, dating to around 1830, with later additions and alterations, including work undertaken in the 1980s. The exterior is stucco over brickwork, with a concealed roof. The building is four stories high and has seven windows on the first floor. The first, second, and third floors feature six-over-six cambered-arched sash windows set in near-flush frames. Architectural details include a cornice above the first floor, a band above the second floor, a cornice above the second floor, a crowning frieze, and a low, coped parapet. The ground floor is horizontally rusticated and features a central, three-part Doric portico with an entablature (occupying the site of a former carriage entrance) that provides access to the shopping centre. Replacement plate-glass shop fronts are located on either side of the portico.

Inside, at the rear to the right of the passageway, there is a full-height open newel staircase with rod-on-vase balusters, a shaped handrail, and carved tread ends. A front room on the first floor preserves two transverse beams with a roll-moulding and moulded cornices. Other rooms on the first floor retain fluted cornices.

Historically, the building was known as The Unicorn Hotel and was a principal coaching inn in Georgian Worcester, alongside others such as the former Crown Hotel and The Star Hotel. The hotel was built over the northern line of Worcester’s Saxon town defences, which were revealed in excavations in 1989. The building sits within a significant group of listed buildings along Broad Street, which includes numbers 10, 10A, 11, 12, 18, 29, 32-36, 40, 41, 43-49, 51-63, 69, 70, and the Church of All Saints.