Old Ship Assembly Rooms

BRIGHTON

TQ3004SE SHIP STREET 577-1/39/848 (East side) 13/10/52 No.73 Old Ship Assembly Rooms

II*

Assembly rooms. 1767, frontage to Ship Street c1895. Stucco, roof of tiles. 2 storeys, 2-window range. Ground floor has flat-arched carriage entrance to right, assembly rooms entrance to left, and one central broad entrance flanked by 2 narrower ones. First floor has 2 oriel windows with original glazing; gutters; 3 flat-arched dormers in roof. INTERIOR: former Assembly Room, now the Regency Room, on the first floor: 1767 by Robert Golden and decorated in the Adam style. Flat-arched entrance to Ballroom with architrave, cornice on consoles, guilloche frieze, and double panelled doors possibly of original design; facing this, a Palladian window with fluted Corinthian pilasters and guilloche frieze, and the cornice element not now visible; in one long wall of the room, a window bay flanked by fluted Composite columns and facing it in the other wall, a fireplace in the Adam style with calyx ornament in the side panels, and fluting and paterae in the frieze. The walls are panelled above and below the dado, the upper walls framed by bands of fasces and bead-and-reel which may belong to the C19; frieze of festoons and drops; dentil cornice. Segmental-arched ceiling decorated principally with figure panels, paterae and wreaths of bud ornament; similar bud ornament to tympana at either end. The windows now glazed with late-C19 leaded lights having some panes of stained glass decorated with emblems in the style of the Aesthetic Movement. The Ballroom was also designed by Golden in 1767 but the decorations have been much reworked. 2 flat-arched entrances with architraves surmounted by a decorative roundel of musical instruments; stage at one narrow end, now much altered, gallery at the other carried on 2 marbled Doric columns, with festoons and drops to the gallery; cantilevered balcony to one long side of the room between entrances, almost a complete oval in plan with an iron balcony; the upper walls panelled in plasters; dentil and modillion cornice, perhaps of 1767; coved ceiling with 3 roses, all with foliage ornament to the centre, the outer pair surrounded with calyx ornament perhaps of 1767. Windows with late C19 leaded lights having some panes of stained glass decorated with emblems in the style of the Aesthetic Movement. The Assembly Rooms were connected with the Old Ship Hotel (not included), the oldest inn in Brighton and the most important in its C18 and early C19 history.

Listing NGR: TQ3098004009