Royal Hotel

The Royal Hotel is an Italianate building from the 1860s, featuring a façade with nine windows plus one set back to the right. It stands four storeys high with an attic, topped by a steep slate roof behind a parapet. The exterior is finished in grey stucco, with some exposed stone and brick stringcourses, and a channelled ground floor. The upper floors generally have sash glazing, while the ground floor features T-bar casements. The top floor has camber-headed windows, and the second floor displays alternating triangular and segmental pedimented windows. The first floor includes round-headed windows, with a central Venetian window, and the ground floor has a canopied entrance with a swan-necked pediment above the doorway, along with camber-headed windows that have casement glazing.

To the right, there is a two-storey splayed bay that is treated as a window on the first floor, accompanied by a shallow porch with pink granite columns. A later addition is a taller corner block that rises five storeys plus an attic, featuring two levels of dormers under a steep slate roof in a French Renaissance style. This section is constructed of channelled bathstone, with pink granite columns on the ground floor and pilasters on the first floor, topped with a stone balustraded parapet. The St Mary Street elevation has four windows on each floor arranged in a 1-2-1 grouping. The convex pedimented corner bay reaches up to the third floor level, with a balustrade beneath the fourth-floor windows; it also features two camber-headed windows on the first floor flanked by granite shafts and stone balconies.

The entrance is located to the left, with a window flanked by heavy granite columns. The Wood Street side has a similar design, with three windows on the upper floors and four on the lower, including a central oriel window on the second and third floors, and balconies on the second and first floors. The ground floor features bar windows with granite columns. The Westgate Street side continues this treatment, leading to a lower, painted stucco block with ten windows.

Although not accessible at the time of inspection, it is known that the hotel retains a panelled room where Captain Scott and his party dined on the eve of their departure for the South Pole in June 1910.