The Dragon Hotel

The Dragon Hotel

A hotel, grade II listed, dating from the 19th century with significant earlier structural elements. The building is stuccoed with applied 19th-century timbering above the ground floor, extending into an added late 19th-century gable to the left and three large gabled dormers. The roof is slate, hipped to the left corner, with a right-end brick stack. The gable to the left and three dormers feature overhanging verges. The main structure comprises two storeys and attic with cellar beneath. A wide band of windowless mock framing sits between the first-floor windows and eaves. The façade is arranged in four bays.

The broad gabled bay to the left contains a triple sash window of 4-12-4 panes on the ground floor and 3-9-3 panes on the first floor, with a pair of 6-pane sashes in the gable. The first floor has three hornless 9-pane sashes above respectively: a wide carriageway with chamfered jambs and billet-moulded lintel; a large canted bay window with hipped slate roof and three horned 12-pane sashes; and a modern window with hopper top light. The narrow east return features a broad cambered-headed basement doorway with double ledged doors and long hinges, alongside another gabled 19th-century dormer. A brick south-end stack sits on a massive rendered square external chimneybreast, visible from the rear court of Braemar, Kerry Street.

The rear court is flanked by two long wings. The south-west wing is raised on a bank with its north end adjoining but set back from the right end of the main façade. This section is constructed of rubble stone with a hipped roof at the north end, featuring a leaded first-floor three-light with top-lights. The range extends back in two sections, with the rear west wall of stone and then brick. The court-facing front has modern render, two narrow horned sash windows with glazing bars on the first floor over a modern garage entry, a half-glazed modern door, and a hipped porch. A broad projecting gable occupies the rear left of the main range in painted stucco with modern windows. The rear right has one bay of renewed windows over 20th-century additions at ground level. To the right, at right angles, a one-bay rear wing features a large west mock-timbered gable and the massive south-end chimney with brick stack.

Three south-east rear wings are attached. The first has two large modern dormers and a rendered front with a late 19th-century porch featuring a hipped slate roof. The second, set back and lower, is obscured by a large 20th-century conservatory, though its upper floor retains some square-framed timbering and a large late 19th or 20th-century dormer on the eaves. A taller two-storey painted brick south-end block features 20th-century casement windows. The rear of these ranges, visible from the rear yard of Braemar, Kerry Street, reveals complex building history. The first comprises red brick and rubble stone mixed to the left, red brick to the right, arranged in two storeys on a high base. Four first-floor horned sashes are present: 9-pane to the left, shorter 6-pane to the right, above three cambered-headed 12-pane sashes. The second lower range displays heavy 17th-century square framing over a rubble plinth. Three by seven panels feature angle braces in the top panels, with red brick infill to a four-panel section to the right and plaster to a three-panel left section, which has a small rendered gable above with modern window. A windowless rendered rear wall encloses the third building.

Interior

The main entrance leads into what was formerly a through passage, now enclosed with modern glazed doors. Brick walls and six-panel fielded-panelled doors line this space, with stone cobbled setts underfoot.

The north-west dining room was created by joining two rooms together. The west half contains an ornately reeded and stopped spine beam with joists dating to the late 16th century. The adjacent north-east room has a bar that partially conceals a large south wall fireplace with stone jambs and a fine late 16th-century moulded lintel featuring edge mouldings of hollow, fillet, and ogee profiles that run out at each end, with the face decorated with two scribed fillets. The plaster ceiling displays three deep rectangular panels with heavy mouldings of early 18th-century date. Panelled early 19th-century shutters are fitted to the tripartite sash. The remainder of the interior was not inspected.