Royal Hotel is a Grade II listed building in the Norwich local planning authority area, England. First listed on 8 April 1986. Hotel, restaurant, bar, office. 4 related planning applications.
Royal Hotel
- WRENN ID
- inner-hinge-azure
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Norwich
- Constituency
- Norwich South MP: Clive Lewis (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 8 April 1986
- Type
- Hotel, restaurant, bar, office
- Address
- Royal Hotel, Agricultural Hall Plain, NR2 4SF
- OS grid reference
- TG 233 086
- Coordinates
- 52.62953, 1.29839
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Royal Hotel, built between 1896 and 1897 by E. Boardman and Sons, is a former hotel that now serves as a restaurant and bar with offices. It features red brick and terra cotta panels and has slate roofs. The building is situated on an island site and consists of four storeys plus an attic storey. The principal facade, which is semi-octagonal, has six south-facing bays.
The design includes square corner turrets and dormer gables at the ends and in the central bays. The ground floor has mullion and transom windows with semi-circular moulded brick arches and a drip course. The central entrance on the south side is highlighted by a first-floor balcony supported by consoles, extending halfway across the adjacent bays. Above this entrance is a single-storey bay window featuring brick mullion and transom windows topped with a crenellated parapet.
Throughout the building, there are mullion and transom windows with side-hung casements, while the third floor is adorned with sash windows. Each dormer gable contains four sash windows, flat rubbed brick arches, and a triangular pediment above the two central windows. The central gable features blind reticulated tracery above the pediment.
On the left-hand side, there are mullion and transom stair windows at half-floor level, set within a recess that has moulded brick jambs and a semi-circular head with blind tracery. The square turrets flanking the end and central dormer gables are accentuated by windows set within paired arched recesses, which have moulded brick jambs and square, decorated aprons beneath the windows.
The corners of the building are marked by twisted brick pilasters that terminate at the cornice level, with small octagonal turrets featuring blind tracery above. A heavy cornice supports tripartite arches and a vegetal frieze, leading to a parapet. Between each corner turret and dormer gable, there are four hipped-roof dormers, while the turrets are topped with pyramidal roofs and finials, along with lead conical roofs on the octagonal turrets.
Local climate
Royal Hotel sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 710 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 88% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 95% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 24 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 75% of listed buildings. Of these, 13 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- Related listed building consents — 4 applications
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
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