The Savoy, Donaghadee Road, Bangor, Co Down, BT20 4QR

The Savoy, Bangor

The Savoy is an imposing detached four-storey multi-bay former hotel built in the International style. It was originally designed by Robert N Savage and opened for the 1931 season, then refaced and extended by architect John McBride Neill in 1933. It stands prominently at the convergence of four roads, on the corner of Hamilton Road and Donaghadee Road in the centre of Bangor. Since 1989–90 it has been in residential use, currently operated as sheltered housing under the Clanmil Group.

Design and Exterior

The building is U-shaped on plan with connecting bays on a north–south axis and a single-storey return to the rear. The main block has a metal-sheeted pitched roof; the porch has a flat roof. Rainwater goods are uPVC. Walls are painted smooth render with curved corners, a characteristic feature of the International style. The windows are black powder-coated aluminium, replaced in 1989, and on the main elevations are arranged as continuous bands of glazing in groups of four, with multi-paned glazing at ground floor level.

The principal elevation faces north and has a strong horizontal emphasis, with continuous moulded bands above and below the glazing. The slightly projecting entrance bay is three windows wide and designed with a contrasting vertical emphasis, featuring a stepped gable with the word SAVOY in large applied lettering at its centre. The ground-floor entrance is set under a flat roof with deeply recessed steel-framed double-leaf automatic doors flanked by full-height windows.

The east elevation shows the gables of the front and rear blocks, each with single window openings to all floors; the rear block has an additional window at ground floor level. The connecting bays on this elevation have breakthrough arches to left and right, creating access to internal courtyards, with a single opening to each floor and an entrance door at ground level. The south elevation is sixteen windows wide, with ramped and stepped access to entrance doors at left and right respectively. At ground floor to the right is the single-storey return, the gable of which contains a modern glazed fire door; the exposed eastern section of this return is four windows wide. The west elevation is six windows wide, and the exposed section of the rear return is three windows wide.

History

The hotel first appears, uncaptioned, on the fifth edition Ordnance Survey map of 1939. According to Patton, the hotel was originally built around 1932 for John Gaston of Northern Ireland Tours, who ran bus tours and opened it for the summer season. However, valuation records of May 1934 indicate the hotel had been open for three seasons by that date, confirming it first opened for the 1931 season. In the valuation records it is entered as the New Savoy Hotel, with John Gaston as occupier and Hugh H Moore as landlord, at a valuation of £132. It was open from the beginning of June to the end of September and in its first two seasons had 72 bedrooms.

The original design earned the building the local nickname "Sing-Sing", owing to its rather meagre vertical fenestration, and Gaston subsequently commissioned John McBride Neill to remodel the facade in the International style in 1933. This remodelling raised the valuation to £350 and expanded the hotel to 127 bedrooms, though the valuer noted there were only four bathrooms and that the bedrooms were small. Ground-floor accommodation at this stage included a bell room and a refrigerator with an electric motor. There were 41 bedrooms on the first floor and 43 each on the second and third floors. The hotel ran a diesel oil engine for four hours a day to provide electric light, had an outside boiler house for central heating, and provided basins with hot and cold water in each room. Neill later designed the Tonic Cinema (now demolished) and was responsible for a number of other cinemas throughout the north of Ireland.

The hotel was extended and improved over subsequent decades. In 1936 a new rear wing enlarged the hall and lounge at ground floor level, raising the valuation to £430. In 1942 the building was occupied by the military, though the exact use is not recorded. An elevator serving all floors was installed in 1950, by which time the hotel was supplied with electricity from the Electricity Board Northern Ireland; the lift reduced the guest room count by three, though those rooms were repurposed as staff accommodation, and the valuation rose to £530. By 1950 the hotel was open for approximately 18 weeks of the year. A further rear extension in 1951 added ladies' and gents' toilets, a lounge, a store, and a manager's apartment at ground floor level, together with five double bedrooms, three single bedrooms, and one storeroom on the first floor, bringing the valuation to £580. Between 1954 and 1955, staff accommodation, a boiler house, and an additional block of bedrooms with a covered corridor were added; a Nissen hut was removed at the same time, and the valuation was raised successively to £600 and then £650.

It is likely that the growing popularity of package holidays abroad during the 1960s and 1970s contributed to the hotel's decline. In 1989–90 it was converted for use by the Royal British Legion Housing Association to designs by Robinson Patterson Partnership. During this conversion some single-storey sections of the former hotel site were demolished, the main building and annexe blocks were refurbished, the facades were re-clad, and the windows were replaced. All interior detailing from the hotel period has been lost.

Setting

The Savoy occupies a prominent position at the convergence of four roads. It is bounded to the west and east by masonry walls and hedgerow, with bollards and chains to the front. To the rear of the building are free-standing blocks of two-storey apartments forming part of the Savoy complex, accessed from the south by a tarmacadam driveway.

Significance

Despite the loss of its original hotel interior, the replacement of its windows, and the compromising of its external form through modern extensions and inappropriate detailing, the Savoy remains one of the very few distinctive buildings of the 1930s to survive in the province and a rare example of the International style as interpreted by a local architect. Its streamlined form and severe detailing are of particular note. Patton has described it as "probably the most distinctive building from the 1930s surviving in the province."