Norton House Hotel

Cadw's description

Location

Approximately 0.75km NNW of Oystermouth church.

History

Said to be late C18 and the work of Italian craftsmen. The present L-shaped service range was built in the late C19 replacing an earlier service range shown on the 1844 Tithe and 1880 Ordnance Surveys. The house was a private college 1948-59, then a country club and subsequently an hotel.

Exterior

A Georgian villa of 2 storeys and 3 bays, with stuccoed walls retaining traces of scribing, and projecting eaves under a hipped slate roof (the stacks have been taken down). The symmetrical front has a central portico with Greek Doric columns in antis, a simple entablature with frieze of wreaths, and a doorway with moulded architrave, plain semi-circular overlight and replaced door. The windows are 12-pane hornless sashes. In the lower storey the windows of the outer bays have shallow rusticated aedicules, the shallow projection carried up above a sill band in the upper storey to frame the windows in the outer bays of the upper storey. The upper storey windows have thin moulded architraves.
In the L side wall are 2 full-height canted bays and a moulded sill band to the upper storey. The upper storey has 3 hornless sashes in architraves; in the lower storey are French doors in the canted bays, on the L side with steps leading to a basement door. A full-width verandah with shallow projections respecting the canted bays has polygonal wooden posts, an open meander and palmette frieze, and a swept roof with fishscale slates. The 3-bay rear wall is cement-rendered and has French doors in architraves to the lower storey. In the upper storey are 12-pane hornless sashes in the outer bays with architraves and a sill band. The central window is cut down to make an escape stair.
On the R (W) side of the front is a lower L-shaped 2-storey service range. The oldest part, attached to the main house, has a hipped slate roof and 2 hornless sashes in the upper storey with a later lean-to below.

Interior

An entrance vestibule has a plaster vault and leads to the stair hall. The geometrical stair has a wreathed handrail, scrolled iron balusters and moulded string. At the top is a gallery with a plaster vault. In the stair hall are round-headed alcoves. The principal interior room is to the L and is now a restaurant. It has 2 arched, moulded recesses, and a cornice of acanthus leaves. Other rooms have classicising plaster cornices.

Reason for designation

Listed as a Georgian villa retaining its original character, of a type once familiar in the district.