Irving Court With Attached Walls Railings And Piers

Irving Court is a house, later adapted for use as a hotel and now flats, dating from approximately 1820-1830. It was recorded on Merrett's map of 1834 as the Belle Vue Hotel, and has undergone alterations since. The building is constructed with stucco over brick, featuring a concealed roof and wrought-iron detailing, brick walls, and ashlar piers.

The house is set at an angle to the street, incorporating a trapezoid-shaped porch. The front elevation is four storeys high, with three windows on the first floor and five windows on the right return. Decorative stucco elements include four Doric pilasters, extending from the first floor to the second and third floors, and bands marking the second and third floors that continue onto the returns. A crowning architrave, frieze, and cornice top the facade, with a central stack incorporated into a feature with upturns and scrolled ends. The first and second floors have 6/6 sash windows, while the third floor has 3/3 sashes. The central bay on the first and second floors contains blind tripartite openings within tooled surrounds, with sills resting on scrolled corbel brackets. The third floor of this bay features a central panel with a tooled surround. All windows are set in plain reveals and have sills. The ground floor has a solid “loggia” with four round arches supported by impost capitals with tooled heads and Doric pilasters. A flight of steps leads to mid-20th-century glazed doors within the second arch, while the remaining arches contain casement windows with fanlights and margin glazing, topped by an architrave, frieze, and dentil cornice.

The right return (garden facade) has a three-window range that projects forwards. The ground, first, and second floors feature 6/6 sashes, with taller windows on the first floor, while the third floor has 3/3 sashes. The garden facade includes two verandahs with balustrades featuring concentric circles, embellished rods, scrolled uprights, and a scrolled frieze.

Subsidiary features include walls surrounding a roughly 30-meter square lawned garden, with piers at the corners. These piers have a frieze, shaped caps, and renewed railings.

Historical records indicate the property was formerly the town house of the Hicks Beach family. A smaller house was present on the site by 1820, and it became a hotel by 1845, described as having "international accommodations" by Rowe in his 1850 guide to Cheltenham. The proprietor was Mr. B. Thomas, who was also a wine merchant and auctioneer. The garden facade forms a group with numbers 1-21 (odd) Berkeley Place, overlooking the gardens of that property, now an open space. The interior of the building has not been inspected.