Pennsylvania Castle Hotel With Attached Walls

This is a large country house, now a hotel, built around 1800 for John Penn, grandson of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania in the United States. It was designed by the architect James Wyatt. The building is constructed of squared and coursed Portland stone with slate roofs and crenellated parapets.

It has a compact, long, rectangular shape with small, projecting corner turrets rising above the centre. On the east (garden) side, there is a large cylindrical tower, a one-storey octagonal bay extension, and a crenellated one-storey extension to the south, alongside a late 20th-century flat-roofed block in two storeys. Various additions have been made to the west (road) side. The garden front is in a Gothic style, featuring a set-back three-bay central portion with small, square casements with bars to interlaced heads, above narrow lancets. Paired French doors with bars and interlacing are also present. A late 20th-century glazed conservatory now runs full-width between the ends, concealing the ground-floor glazing. To the right is a small single light in a canted wall connecting to the round tower which has four windows; casements are in flat surrounds above paired French doors in similar surrounds. The south front includes a single-storey unit with arched French doors to the east and south, and late 20th-century additions. The west, or road, front has various additions, including seven 2-light casements with bars at first floor, matching those on the east front.

The interior plan includes a long corridor to the east, featuring a circular room, a tight, open-well wooden staircase, and an extended dining room to the left, alongside a main entrance hall with secondary rooms to the right. The entrance hall has a stone 4-centred arch fireplace. The circular room (now a bar) retains its original cornice and two blank, semi-circular, flat recesses, and features a good panelled door in an architrave to the hall. The dining room has a good original cornice, later extended into an octagonal bay, with an inserted double pilaster fireplace and a moulded arch to a corridor door. Various original panelled doors remain at both levels. The plan is unusual, notably lacking a "grand" staircase.

The building’s original owner served as Governor of Portland. It is also referenced as "Sylvania Castle" in Hardy’s novel The Well-Beloved.

Subsidiary features include a plain, coped boundary wall, approximately 2 metres high, which extends about 20 metres north and curves into the square turret, with a gate opening. A rubble wall, also around 2 metres high, curves from the southwest corner, extending approximately 45 metres to the site boundary, with a simple opening near the north end, enclosing the garden. The hotel is situated on a raised platform facing the sea, directly above the ruins of the former St. Andrew's Church.