The King's Head Hotel

The King's Head Hotel, Nos. 7 & 9 Agincourt Square

This group comprises three adjoining buildings of different dates and origins, now forming a single hotel complex.

The former Monmouth Bank (No. 7) dates from around 1740. It is stucco fronted with rusticated quoins, floor-bands and key-blocks, with the roof hidden behind a plain parapet. The building has four storeys. The ground floor features three semi-circular headed sash windows and a doorway set within a rusticated arcade with plain pilasters, arranged in the pattern W : W : D : W (window, window, door, window). The doorway is a late twentieth-century insertion; it had no door in 1900 when the building was already part of the hotel, though the bank must originally have had one. The next two floors above have three 6 over 6 pane sashes each. The centre first-floor window has an apron inscribed 'MONMOUTH' (presumably originally with 'BANK' below it). A board below the second-floor windows reads 'THE KING'S HEAD HOTEL'. The third floor has three 6 over 3 pane sashes. An ornate down-pipe with hopper lettered 'L B' (Lloyds Bank) runs down the right side.

The King's Head building (No. 8) is a seventeenth-century building that was re-fronted in the eighteenth century and given late nineteenth-century added gables. It is rendered and painted with rusticated quoins and a Welsh slate roof. The building has three storeys and an attic, with two gables and five windows. The ground floor has two shallow bow windows and a central porch with two plain columns over the pavement. The bows contain triple 6 over 6 pane sashes, with a small 4 over 4 pane sash to the right. The second and third floors have 6 over 6 pane sashes with keyed heads and a band between. The gutter sits on timber brackets. The gables feature half-timbering and plain bargeboards, with a spike finial on the left-hand gable. Each gable contains a 3 + 3 pane casement window.

The former County Club (No. 9) was built in 1875 and designed by T H Wyatt. It is rendered and painted with painted quoins and bands, and has a Welsh slate roof. The building comprises two storeys and an attic, with a single bay and gable above. The ground floor has two mullion-and-transom windows and a plain door with slated hood to the right. This doorway was a window until recent years, though it was originally a door. The first floor features a large canted oriel on timber brackets, containing a 1 + 3 + 1 mullion and transom window with slate hood and half-timbered apron decorated with quatrefoils. The gable is half-timbered with a triple 2-pane casement.

The rear elevation of these buildings, visible from St. John's Street, is complex but demonstrates that they are built in the ditch of the castle outer bailey, as there is an additional understorey on this side. The King's Head itself has a three-bay elevation with giant Tuscan pilasters flanking triple sashes on two floors, then sidelights—one blind on the left—with further flanking pilasters. A small triple sash appears in the attic entablature.

The interior has been drastically altered during modernisation of The King's Head by T J Weatherspoon around 1995. The ground floor is now a modern lobby and the staircase has been replaced. The upper floors were not inspected.