Royal Hotel

The Royal Hotel is a hotel dating from approximately 1845, possibly designed by HE Goodridge. Built of limestone ashlar with slate roofs, it occupies a large L-shaped plan facing Bath Spa railway station. The building is set within traditional Bath classical detailing and includes a lower wing to the rear, behind a boundary wall.

The three-storey structure, with attic and basement, features two and three windows to Manvers Street, three to the quadrant, and one and five to Railway Place. Most windows are sashes with glazing bars in moulded stone architraves, with a six-pane window to the attic above twelve, eighteen, and twelve-pane sashes on the lower half of the ground floor. The first-floor quadrant windows have eared architraves and cornices, with a pediment over the central unit. Basement windows are fitted with pavement grilles. A pair of panelled doors under a transom light are at the centre of the quadrant, set within deep reveals, and a porte-cochere projects over the pavement, supported by slender cast iron columns with a flat canopy on filigree iron brackets. The building has a small plinth, a channelled ground floor beneath a frieze and moulded band, a full entablature with a deep moulded cornice, an attic, a moulded dentil cornice, and blocking. The quadrant incorporates two Ionic columns in-antis and paired Doric antae, inflected at the entablature, and carried through to the attic storey, with small decorative blockings above the Ionic columns. Five bays are present to the left, and a single bay to the right, with flat pilaster divisions also carried through the attic. The final two bays to Manvers Street are set back above the ground floor, with a four-bay cast iron balustrade and a pair of part-glazed doors under a transom light, set in deep reveals. Numerous ashlar stacks rise through coped divisions. To the right is a tall ashlar boundary wall, behind which stands a single-storey extension with a slate pyramid roof and a prominent square lantern. An end first-floor window on Railway Place was historically a doorway leading to a footbridge connecting directly to the railway station platform.

The interior has been considerably altered. The design is mirrored by the Argyll Hotel on Dorchester Street, forming a formal entrance to Manvers Street, leading from the railway station to the city centre. This approach was planned according to the Great Western Railway Act of 1835 and the buildings are early examples of railway hotels.