Arnos Manor Hotel

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 11 October 2021 to update the name and address and to reformat the text to current standards

ST67SW 901-1/56/426

BRISTOL Brislington BATH ROAD (South East side) No 470 (Arnos Manor Hotel)

(Formerly listed as Parkside Hotel, previously listed as: BATH ROAD Arno's Court Hotel)

08/01/59

GV II*

House, formerly a convent, now hotel. 1760. Extended c1850. Possibly by James Bridges, for the Quaker and copper smelter William Reeve. Bath stone; roof not visible. Double-depth plan. Classically-derived house with applied Gothick detail. Three storeys; seven-window range. Two full-height canted bays, separated by the entrance; rusticated ground floor, plat bands, successively narrower, at each floor and cornice level; jutting crenellated parapet has corner blocks with sunken quatrefoils. The entrance porch has a Gibbs surround with frosted rustication and pediment containing a rocaille cartouche, with a lancet arch inside and crenellated parapet above, leading to side niches and a semicircular doorway; round-headed niches with ogee mouldings above to each side; the manner in which the porch meets the rest of the house suggests it is a later addition.

Ground-floor windows are 6/6 sashes set back, with three-part segmented heads; similar sashes to first floor have an architrave and ogee with trefoil moulding above, terminating above the string in a finial; similar ogee over middle window, but forming a cinquefoil over a semicircular opening flanked by pilasters; smaller, 3/3 second-floor sashes; all have interlacing tops. Left-hand elevation has single range of blind windows to match the front. Fenestration returns down right elevation for seven-window range, some blanked-off.

INTERIOR: originally had some of Thomas Stocking's finest Rococo plasterwork, of which remains the fine trellised roses and birds on the former Drawing Room ceiling, which also has fielded shutters and moulded panels on the walls, an oval centrepiece to stairwell ceiling, and cornices in entrance hall. The staircase has been altered to a C19 imperial stair, which fits in the original apsidal well.

Extended and converted to a convent c1850. Associated with the Bath House, linked by a tunnel beneath the Bath Road but removed to Portmeirion in 1957, Triumphal Arch (qv) and Black Castle (qv).

(Gomme A, Jenner M and Little B: Bristol, An Architectural History: Bristol: 1979-: 166;

Rowbotham T L S: Arno's Court and the Black Castle: 1826-1827;

Mowl T: To Build the Second City: Bristol: 1991-).

Listing NGR: ST6111771540