Imperial Hotel

The Imperial Hotel is a large, complex hotel building constructed in phases, with elements from the 18th and 20th centuries. The facade to The Paragon comprises five blocks of varying design. The westernmost block is five storeys high with four bays, featuring a parapet and a modillion cornice below an attic. 20th-century windows now fill the original sash window openings, including those to the attic floor. A sill band runs to the third floor, and the ground floor has been altered in the 20th century, incorporating an awning. This section is built upon a medieval town wall, with three storeys above the wall and a two-bay section to the left with plain eared window surrounds and a sill band. A stucco half-round tower rises above a medieval bastion, with small round arched windows on each floor and a stucco, corbelled embattled parapet.

The second block is a four-storey, two-bay section with an attic and a moulded cornice and parapet. 20th-century windows are set in the original openings, with two 20th-century doors on the ground floor, again under a 20th-century awning.

The third block is windowless to the north but features a two-window range of 20th-century windows on its eastern return wall. A ground-floor arched doorway is present on the left.

The fourth block is a long, two-storey, six-bay range with a parapet, entablature with a modillion cornice, and a thin band over each floor. It has narrow or wider, four-pane sash windows in shouldered surrounds. From the right end, the arrangement is a broad sash over a narrow sash, then a plain door set in an angle. A tall stair window has patterned glazing bars and a sill below a ground-floor band, with three radiating voussoirs rising to the first-floor band. A broad sash sits above a broad doorway with a moulded cornice on console brackets; the door itself has sidelights and an overlight, and is arched. This is followed by two narrow sashes on each floor, and finally a broad sash on each floor. The eastern end wall has a cornice and parapet, but 20th-century windows have been inserted to the right on each of the basement, ground, and first floors.

At the rear of each section, basement floors open into a 20th-century flat-roofed restaurant extending to the cliff edge. The rear elevations are varied: one is five storeys high with a cornice under the attic and a stepped parapet; another is four storeys high with a central three-storey canted bay containing eight, 20, eight-pane sash windows; a third is four storeys high, two bays wide, with a hipped roof behind a parapet and renewed sixteen-pane sashes over a ground-floor canted bay. A mixed two-storey range, apparently of several builds, has canted bay windows and other features. The 20th-century basement has a massive rubble stone retaining wall built up from the rock below, and two long bands of windows separated by three tower-like stone bays, each with two long vertical windows.