Angel Hotel and Motel and stables attached to the rear

Angel Hotel and Motel with stables attached to the rear

An inn and house, now hotel, dating from the 17th century and remodelled and refronted in the early 18th century when the inn was enlarged by incorporating the adjacent house. The building stands on the west side of Market Place in Chippenham.

The exterior is constructed in painted limestone ashlar with a stone slate roof hipped to the front and plain tile roof to part of the rear right wing, and Welsh slate roof to the rear left wing hipped to the rear. Moulded ashlar chimney stacks rise from the left, centre ridge and front right of centre, with brick stacks serving the rear wings.

The plan comprises five units with two rear wings and an attached stable range to the rear left. The original inn occupies the north section, with the incorporated house to the south. A wing to the rear of the south range is said to have been an assembly room.

The main elevation is three storeys high with a symmetrical seven-window range. A balustraded parapet with a returned cornice runs across the front, with platbands between floors and a plinth beneath. The windows are 6/6-pane sashes with heavy glazing bars; those to the upper floors have cyma-moulded architraves while those to the ground floor have roll-edge moulding. A large restored prostyle porch features paired Tuscan columns at the corners supporting an entablature and balustraded parapet. A large pedimented dormer is set to the right of the range. To the far right is a window set within a former doorway with engaged Tuscan columns supporting a pediment. The rear of the main block has a short central wing with double-pitched hipped roof and a two-light stone-mullioned window.

The right wing's first block, probably 17th century, has a steeply pitched plain tile roof, an early 19th-century horizontal 10/10-pane sash window at eaves level, probably a former mullioned window to the left, and a 6/6-pane sash to the first floor right, with 20th-century windows to the ground floor. The rear block features a stone stack to the left gabled out from the roof, three truncated brick stacks above the wall, and various 20th-century windows. The gable end has stone coping and a 20th-century door. The 19th-century rear left wing is three storeys with a four-window range; the second-floor window is cantilevered out over a former courtyard now filled in, with 6/6-pane and plate-glass sash windows throughout.

The interior includes cased beams and joists to the ground floor. A first-floor room contains a bolection-moulded fireplace. Timber-framed partitions include a stair turret with turned balusters serving an early 18th-century open-well staircase. The south range has an 18th-century three-bay collar-truss roof. The roof to the original part of the building is an unusually early four-bay king-post roof with horizontal bracing at collar level and tenoned purlins, dating to the early 17th century. This was altered in the 18th century including the addition of a north hip linked to the refronting works.

The stable block to the rear left features a stone tile roof half-hipped to the rear, gabled to the centre over a depressed arched loading bay with a chamfered stone doorway.

Historical records show that an inn on this site was called The Bull in 1613 and became known as The Angel by 1747. According to Smollett's novel Humphry Clinker, this was the hotel where the eponymous hero's mother worked as bar-keeper. The early 17th-century king-post roof is a notably early example for this region, with only late 16th-century examples previously recorded locally in Lacock.