Former Royal Arms Temperance Hotel Guildford Institute

The building comprises a former Temperance Hotel and an Institute, now a bank, located on a corner site in Guildford. The Temperance Hotel was built in 1880 for the Reverend Francis Paynter of Stoke, and the Institute was added in 1892 in a style that exactly matches the hotel. Both buildings are constructed of colourwashed stucco with slate roofs concealed by parapets.

The Temperance Hotel, which fronts onto North Street, has a three-bay facade with an elaborate bracketed eaves cornice decorated with square panels and floral bosses. A segmental pediment with scrolled strapwork sits above the central bay. Segmental heads are found on the rendered architrave surrounds of the plate glass sash windows. The second floor has three windows with lugged surrounds, vermiculated keystones, rope-moulded jambs, and corbelled sills; the central window features a portrait head keystone and a raised panel below. The first floor windows are beneath cornice hoods with vermiculated panel decoration and an Acanthus leaf impost band linking the central window, supported by foliage scrolls. A balcony with cross-braced roundel panels extends across the front of these windows. The ground floor has three cambered-head fixed windows with a cornice above. An angled corner, at the junction of North and Ward Streets, is chamfered with a single window on each floor and a door below.

The Guildford Institute, which faces Ward Street, has four bays, with a channelled ground floor and windows on the right. To the left, four bays adjoin the hotel, mirroring the style and fenestration.

The Institute’s history traces back to the Guildford Mechanics Institution, founded in March 1834 to promote useful knowledge among the working classes, an uncommon foundation for the region at that time. The 1835 Literary and Scientific Institution merged with the Mechanics Institution in 1843. The Institute initially occupied the upper floors of the Temperance Hotel before constructing its own premises in 1892.