Redcliffe Hotel

Redcliffe Hotel, Paignton

A house built 1855–65 with an earlier core, erected for Robert Smith, a retired Indian engineer. The contractor was Tozer of Paignton. The building was converted to a hotel in 1903 by contractors Dart and Pollard of Paignton (a plaque recording this survives in the entrance hall). The house has undergone various twentieth-century alterations and additions.

Smith's building is designed in Gothick style with Indian influence. It is constructed of roughcast with stuccoed detail; the roof and chimney stacks of the original build are concealed by parapets. The structure sits on the seafront with an approximate T-shaped plan. No obvious trace remains of the pre-1853 house that Smith's building incorporated and converted.

According to Pevsner, Smith's original building consisted of a rotunda facing east towards the sea with three added wings: one for a picture gallery, one for a conservatory and billiard room, and one for servants' quarters. There was originally a tunnel leading to a plunge bath on the beach below, which was destroyed in a storm in 1867. Only the north wing (on the west side) remains clearly identifiable as Smith's work. The west wing was thoroughly recast around 1902 and has since been extended westward. The south wing has also been considerably altered. A 1986 addition is not included in the listing.

The exterior features a three-storey rotunda and two-storey wings, with the west wing rising to three storeys. The east elevation facing the sea comprises the rotunda with a four-bay front, flanked by a five-and-two-window wing to the left (south) and a two-and-six-window front to the right (north). The rotunda is topped by a corbelled parapet with ogival merlons and an inner parapet behind bearing flattened spear-shaped merlons and semi-circular embrasures. The rotunda is crowned by an octagon with a copper tent roof, ball finial, and weathervane. A platband runs at first-floor level.

The east front displays a two-tier canted bay in the centre and to the left, with single-storey canted bays to the left and right of centre. The ground floor contains round-headed windows with twentieth-century glazing and timber bars set within ogival frames topped with curly ogee hoodmoulds bearing a star at the apex. The canted bays have plain parapets. Recessed crosses in the front wall contain painted reliefs of thistles and apples in roundels. The first-floor windows are similar but crowned with spear motifs at the apex of their hoodmoulds. The central canted bay carries a cast-iron balcony on brackets with diagonal braces and a central decorated roundel. The parapet may originally have been decorated with pineapples, examples of which survive on the left-hand bay window. The wall surfaces between windows are decorated with Maltese crosses. The second-floor windows are smaller but of similar design, and the wall surface is decorated with shields. The parapet sits on moulded corbels with merlons bearing incised crosses. To the left of the rotunda, a flight of curving steps rises to a first-floor entrance.

The left-hand wing, with a plain parapet, represents a stripped-down version of the style. The right-hand wing appears entirely twentieth-century on its seaward front, but to the rear (west) it displays a five-bay elevation clearly Smith's work, featuring a parapet with ogival merlons and two octagonal turrets at the north end with spear-shaped battlementing. Ground-floor windows have ogival hoodmoulds and first-floor windows carry shallow roughcast architraves with imitation keyblocks.

The three-storey west wing with attic storey is roofed with a mansard; it has coved eaves, an ogee-headed attic dormer, and windows with ornate stuccoed architraves of a flame-like design. The north side displays seven second-floor oriels set upon curly ogival arches with pendants. An unsuitable late-twentieth-century hotel porch spans the angle between the rotunda and west wing.

The interior has been partially inspected. The ground-floor room in the rotunda retains its original plaster cornices and ceiling roses, which are delicate though conventionally designed. The first-floor room above is said to retain similar detail. Original fireplaces may survive concealed behind later plaster. A circa 1903 staircase features carved figures rising above the handrail. Other features of interest may survive elsewhere in the building.

Robert Smith died in 1873. In 1877 the house was purchased by Paris Singer (see Oldway Mansion). In 1902 it was sold and altered as a hotel. The West Country Studies Library in Exeter holds a printed souvenir of the hotel dating to around 1910, which records that decoration was undertaken by Coverdale and Co. of No. 15 Palace Avenue, Paignton. Photographs from that period show symmetrical low wings flanking the main block.

Although considerably altered at its margins, the central core of the building is particularly interesting for its unusual design and details. The structure makes an important contribution to the seafront at this end of Paignton.