Lisle House And Wellesley Court Hotel

Lisle House and Wellesley Court Hotel are a pair of houses, now operating as flats and a hotel, built between 1837 and 1838. They were constructed as stucco over brick, with concealed roof and stucco end and ridge stacks. The building is three storeys high with a basement, and has four bays – six first-floor windows arranged in a 2:1:1:2 pattern – with a service range to the rear. The central two bays project slightly forward.

Architectural detailing includes horizontal rustication drawn into voussoirs on the ground floor outer bays, a first-floor band surmounted by fluted Ionic pilasters that extend through the ground and first floors, an architrave, frieze, and dentil cornice, further pilasters with a frieze and cornice, and a blocking course. The ground floor outer bays feature 1/1 sash windows. The centre bays have 1/1 sashes with side-sashes within a pilastered architrave with a frieze and cornice. First and second floors feature 6/6 sashes on the outer bays, while internally, the windows are 6/6 between 2/2 sashes. The taller first-floor windows are set in tooled architraves, and all have sills. The basement has tripartite 6/6 windows between 2/2 sashes in the centre, and 8/8 sashes elsewhere.

The entrances, which are similar, are set back to returns and feature a four-panel, part-glazed door with an overlight within a distyle porch with Ionic columns in antis. Returns have three first-floor windows and three full-height fluted Ionic columns. The interior retains original joinery, including shutters to some windows, though the rest of the building was not inspected.

Two continuous balconies, each two bays wide, are ornamented with a scrolled-heart motif. The buildings were constructed as part of the development of the area undertaken for Joseph Pitt between 1825 and 1842, with the general layout designed by John Forbes. Wellesley Court Hotel was originally known as Ross House. Clarence Square was laid out in the late 1820s, with building commencing in 1832. The square was named after the Duke of Clarence, who later became William IV in 1830.