Burlington

The Burlington is a late 19th-century hotel, built in 1893 to a design by T.E. Collcut. Originally the Burlington Hotel, it has since been converted into flats. The design was inspired by the American model of self-contained family suites and the architectural style of H.H. Richardson. The building is arranged over four storeys, with a central section and splayed wings, intended as a 'suntrap' plan. It is constructed of red brick with plaster dressings, and features hipped roofs covered in flat-topped pantiles, with short chimneys featuring vertical ribs and cornices. The central section has a round-arched ground floor. The entrance arch is flanked by Tuscan columns and bull's eye windows. There are eight other arches of brick, with pargetted soffits on stepped-out brick corbels, framing four-light mullioned windows with two transoms. These arches are connected by a decorative pargetted Renaissance-style arabesque frieze and cornice. The first and second floors are red brick, with seventeen windows across the facade. Pilasters and stringcourses are present, with a plaster band connecting the first-floor lintels. There is pargetted capitals and frieze supporting the second-floor eaves. The third floor is half-timbered, recessed behind a hipped roof, forming a frieze of windows beneath projecting eaves. A central raised pediment of pargetting and half-timberwork sits above a three-bay Tuscan loggia between circular brick turrets with copper domes. At each end of the central block, there is a circular brick turret extending to the upper three floors, supported by bulgy plaster corbelling and topped with a conical tile roof. A large circular staircase tower, with narrow stepped windows and a clerestory at the top, is recessed next to the turret, and is also topped with a copper dome and lantern. The splayed wings are canted inwards towards the towers and have similar elevations to the central section: red brick detailing to the first and second floors, and half-timbering to the third, with conical turrets extending down to ground level. Towards the sea, the terraces step downwards, with continuous balustrades of a chinoiserie pattern. The third floor of the central section is entirely plastered.