Ribston Hall And Attached Frontage Railings

GLOUCESTER

SO8218SE SPA ROAD 844-1/11/306 (North side) 25/01/52 Nos.13 AND 15 Ribston Hall and attached frontage railings (Formerly Listed as: SPA ROAD (North side) Ribston Hall (College of Art))

GV II

Hotel. 1829, for John Phillpotts, from 1860 a college for young ladies called Ribston Hall; altered for use as art school annexe 1970. Stuccoed brick, probably slate roof. A large rectangular block with projection to rear right; the facade set back behind a paved railed area, with the former formal garden with railing to the right. EXTERIOR: three storeys; the front of five symmetrical bays and a slightly recessed, narrower sixth bay at the left hand end (1 + 5); offset plinth, crowning entablature from which the cornice has been removed and shallow coped parapet. On the ground floor the entrance doorway in the central bay of the symmetrical five bays, formerly within a porte cochere now demolished but indicated by flanking pilasters; the doorway in a wide segmental-arched opening with a moulded, eared and shouldered architrave frame and with a raised keystone in the arch carved with a mask; moulded door frame and a decorative fanlight with radiating bars; fielded six-panel double doors; other ground floor bays treated as an arcade in which the faces of the broad piers are each decorated with a Greek Revival pattern channelled into the stucco and are capped by moulded imposts, the face of each impost decorated with a panel of incised Greek key pattern; the arches have plain, raised architraves each enclosing a recessed tympanum decorated with a simple, repeating, incised pattern. In each opening a sash with glazing bars (4x4 panes) and between the piers a stone sill projecting at each end on moulded brackets; on the first-floor sashes with glazing bars (3x5 panes),the openings framed by shouldered architraves, moulded cornices on end-brackets,and sills with projecting ends supported on moulded end-brackets; on the second floor shorter sashes with glazing bars (4x4 panes) in openings with moulded eared architraves and projecting stone sills on moulded end-brackets. The east return elevation (garden front): on the ground floor

four arcade bays similar to the entrance front but with narrower openings and lower sills to the sashes (5x3 panes); on the first floor three sashes with glazing bars (3x4 panes) in openings with similar details but smaller than those on the entrance front, and with a pediment above the central window; on the second floor three sashes with glazing bars (3x4 panes) in openings similar details to the entrance front. INTERIOR: not inspected. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: along the street frontage a wrought-iron railing with turned finials on the standards. HISTORY: hotel was originally called The Spa Hotel and was built to accommodate visitors to Gloucester Spa. Elizabeth Barratt Browning was a guest in the former Spa Hotel for a year during convalescence.

Listing NGR: SO8288818029