Westgate Hotel

Westgate Hotel

This is a large hotel with ground floor shops built in the French Renaissance style. The building is constructed of snecked Pennant stone with bathstone dressings, features a slate roof with large yellow brick chimneys and bracketed eaves, and is generally fitted with sash glazing, though the first floor level has T-casements. The building rises to four storeys plus two levels of attics contained within a mansard roof, which includes upper dormers with flat roofs and lower dormers with narrow pedimented treatment.

The Commercial Street frontage contains shops at ground level, articulated by pillars and bracketed cornices, most with modern shopfronts. The main entrance is located on Commercial Street and is flanked by seven windows to the right and six windows to the left, with a further two windows set over an archway and three additional windows set forward with different attic treatment. The entrance bay itself is notable for its pedimented gable and arched window at attic level, paired round windows at the third floor, and an oriel window with Dutch pediment at the second floor, which features a cast-iron balcony panel. Paired windows appear at the first floor, while the ground floor displays an elaborate cast-iron and wrought-iron porch with cast-iron columns featuring floral capitals and enriched spandrels, set over a deeply bracketed hood with granite dressings. The entrance steps lead up to an enclosure containing an early 19th-century Doric porch with fluted iron columns. Third floor windows have aprons, the second floor has simple windows, and the first floor windows feature Dutch pediments and relief bands to the heads. Towards the left of the Commercial Street front, an archway provides access to the rear yard; to the left of this archway, a three-window bay with a curved corner and hipped roof at attic level appears to be of slightly later date. The right corner of the hotel displays bathstone panelling that runs up into the chimney, with blind windows similar to those on Commercial Street; the first floor here has paired arched panels with segmental Dutch pediment.

The return to Stow Hill, where ground level rises, continues in similar architectural character for four windows, the second of which is paired, followed by a lower transitional block of two storeys plus attics containing two windows. Beyond this lies a five-window section where the first floor features narrow windows with tall architraves and Dutch pediments topped by heraldic shields, whilst the ground floor contains windows and doors with segmental pediments.

Within the inner courtyard lie former stables, now the Scrum Half Bar, a two-storey structure with two upper windows and a gabled hood covering a former hoist at ground level (now with modern details). The building has a hipped slate roof, as does a taller service block behind. Additional service blocks occupy the courtyard.

The hotel retains a particularly fine set of well-preserved public rooms in Renaissance style. The entrance hall features granite columns with floral capitals and corbels. A richly articulated wooden stair in Jacobethan style rises to the original top storey of the hotel, featuring turned balusters, urn or ball finials, and scrolled cornices to the staircase hall, with granite pillars also present at landing level. The public rooms include, to the southeast of the entrance, a large room with a deep cornice and ceiling rose. To the northwest of the entrance, a corner room features a cornice and elaborate ceiling rose. At the centre of the Commercial Street front, three smaller rooms in similar style occupy the space between these two larger rooms. The Stow Hill side of the hotel contains a grand ballroom with a coved and ribbed ceiling featuring elaborate oval ceiling roses. Ionic pilasters support a deep swagged frieze which breaks forward on volutes above five round-arched windows, with alternating doors and mirrors opposite. At the south end of the ballroom, a musician's gallery with a balcony featuring a pierced metal frontal sits above a recess with a mirror. At the north end, the main doorway features superimposed pilasters, a bracketed entablature, a lugged architrave, and a keystone with a grotesque head. An elliptical lobby in similar style contains an elliptical arched doorway to the body of the hotel, and an arched recess with doorway to a service corridor. On the floor below the ballroom lies a dining room with a cornice and swagged frieze, connected to the lobby by two elliptical arches. Many of the bedrooms on the upper floors retain cornices, skirtings, and panelled doors.