Former Cauliflower Hotel

Former Cauliflower Hotel

A three-storey plus attic hotel building with a one-storey entrance bay to the west, designed in a free Flemish and Jacobean style with a reinforced concrete frame. The front elevations are faced in red brick with stone and stucco dressings and a polished black granite plinth. The rear elevations are constructed in brown stock brick with some red brick dressings. The roofs are slate.

The building has a roughly rectangular double-pile plan and faces south. The ground floor was originally subdivided into several rooms served by a large central L-shaped servery, but has been largely opened up except for a screen to the right of the main entrance. The public staircase is located to the north-west with back stairs to the north-east. Single-storey ancillary rooms and lavatories are to the north. The first floor is subdivided into hotel rooms with an access corridor on the north side blocked at the north-west end. The second floor contains the kitchen and a number of former hotel rooms.

The principal south elevation is a broadly symmetrical five-bay composition. The bays flanking the central entrance are broader and break forward slightly, featuring two-storey canted bay windows surmounted by attics with Flemish gables. The ground floor is united by a stuccoed cornice with egg-and-dart moulding. The recessed entrance is flanked by polished pink granite columns with Composite capitals and has a coloured mosaic floor bearing the hotel's name in foliated and geometric borders. The bay windows to either side have friezes with floral relief panels. Each of the outer bays has an entrance framed by polished granite Composite pilasters and a scrolled pediment with a ball finial. The central first-floor window is set behind an elliptical arched canopy with decorative stucco spandrels and matching columns; this and the flanking bay windows originally had a balustraded parapet, now removed. Windows to the outer bays have a pulvinated frieze and dentil cornice and ornate pediment. The left-hand gable window has an apron with stucco relief panels of cartouches; its pediment has been removed. The right-hand gable window has a stepped scrolled surround and an apron with terracotta panels of cartouches; it too has lost its pediment and is accentuated by a pavilion roof with ornate iron cresting and weather vane. The return bays have shaped gables. Windows to the front and flank elevations are mainly mullion and transomed with moulded architraves, with those to outer bays having single transoms. Tall slab chimney stacks are present; that to the east flank wall has been removed. The front part of the roof is pitched and the rear hipped. The rear is an irregular ensemble of single and two-storey blocks.

The ground-floor bar has timber dado panelling and an enriched beamed ceiling supported by square concrete pillars clad in timber panelling, and Corinthian columns with embossed decoration to the bar area. The ceiling is decorated with ribbed plasterwork or possibly embossed paper and moulded panels. The large L-shaped servery has a panelled timber bar counter retaining two brass water dispensing taps for diluting spirits. In the middle of the servery is an elaborate full-height timber stillion (a shelving unit) with square fluted colonettes and pilasters with Ionic capitals to the top shelves, etched and cut glass mirrored backs, and a double-faced clock by P. Hector, Ilford, built into the cornice. At the centre of the stillion is a glazed-in publican's office, also with etched and cut glass. A later post-war bell-service board is linked to bell-pushes around the room. The bar counter is edged by polychrome geometric floor tiles. To the right of the entrance is an original arched glazed timber partition with pilasters, a carved pediment and spandrels.

The former billiard room to the rear (north) of the bar was originally top-lit by two glazed lanterns, one boarded over and the other with modern stained glass. The area to the north-west of the bar, possibly a former snug, has three-quarter height raised and fielded panelling and an elaborate Baroque-style timber chimneypiece with a columned surround, mirrored overmantel with a swept broken pediment, and marble slips. The principal stair has an open well with square fluted newels and balusters and a panelled inner-string. The ceiling has deep coving with low relief mouldings of cherubs. The back stair has plain square newels with a boxed-in balustrade.

The first floor has decorative plaster arches to the bay windows, and some dentilled and egg-and-dart cornices survive above suspended ceilings. A corridor along the north elevation has a mosaic floor. The second floor and attic have been subdivided and altered; some fireplaces and built-in cupboards survive but these areas generally lack special interest.