Irving Court With Attached Walls Railings And Piers

CHELTENHAM

SO9522SW HIGH STREET 630-1/14/396 (North East side) 12/03/55 No.23 Irving Court with attached walls, railings and piers (Formerly Listed as: HIGH STREET (North East side) No.23)

GV II

House, hotel, now flats. c1820-30, on Merrett's 1834 Map as the Belle Vue Hotel, with later alterations. Stucco over brick with concealed roof and wrought-iron verandah and window guards, brick walls and ashlar piers. House set at an angle to the street with a trapezoid-shaped porch. EXTERIOR: 4 storeys, 3 first-floor windows with 5-window right return. Stucco detailing includes: 4 Doric pilasters from first floor through second and third floors, to ends and to either side of wide central bay; second- and third-floor bands which continue to returns; crowning architrave, frieze and cornice; central end stack incorporated into feature with upshots to either side with end scrolls. First and second floors have outer 6/6 sashes, third floor has outer 3/3 sashes; to centre bay, first and second floors are blind tripartite openings in tooled surrounds and with sills on scrolled corbel brackets. To third floor is a central panel with tooled surround. All windows in plain reveals and have sills. Ground floor: 4-bay solid 'loggia' with flanking wall to right, has 4 round-arches on impost capitals with tooled heads and Doric pilasters between; entrance to second arch a flight of steps to mid-C20 glazed doors, otherwise arcade has casement windows with fanlights with margin glazing; architrave, frieze and dentil cornice. Right return (garden facade): 3-window range breaks forward. Ground, first and second floors have 6/6 sashes, taller to first floor; third floor has 3/3 sashes; all in plain reveals and with sills. Crowning frieze and cornice. INTERIOR: not inspected. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: first floor, garden facade has 2 verandahs with balustrades of concentric circles and embellished rods, scrolls to uprights and scrolled frieze. Walls adjoining to right surround lawned garden to approx 30m square with piers to angles, square on plan with frieze and shaped caps and renewed railings.

HISTORICAL NOTE: formerly the town house of the Hicks Beach family. The Post Office Map of 1820 show a smaller, but still substantial house on the site. I had become an hotel by 1845 when Rowe describes it in his Guid to Cheltenham (written in 1845 but published in 1850) as, standing conspicuously a short distance beyond the Baths. .. the international accommodations are upon the best scale.' The proprietor was Mr B Thomas, also aWine Merchant and Auctioneer'. The garden facade forms a group with Nos 1-21 (odd) Berkeley Place (qqv), the former gardens of which (now an open space) it looks onto. (Rowe G: Illustrated Cheltenham Guide 1850: Cheltenham: 1850-1969: 72).

Listing NGR: SO9527922081