Celtic Royal Hotel

Cadw's description

Location

Set back behind forecourt walls at the N end of the street.

History

Built as the Uxbridge Arms in the late C18 or early C19 and shown on the 1810 and 1834 town maps. Original rear wings were replaced in the late C20 by extensive modern additions.

Exterior

A 3-storey Georgian hotel comprising a 5-bay main range with 4-bay set-back wings. The symmetrical main range is square in plan, ashlar, with a plat band above the lower storey and upper-storey sill band, with a hipped slate roof on a moulded cornice, and stack behind the front ridge. Windows are 12-pane horned sashes, smaller in the upper storey, beneath lintels. The entrance is within a portico with paired Tuscan columns, blank entablature, and a blocking course. The doorway has half-lit panelled doors and a rectangular overlight with iron radial glazing.

The lower flanking wings are of painted roughcast with slate roofs hipped to the outer sides with 2 ridge stacks, and in each wing the central 2 bays are recessed. Middle and upper storeys have sill bands continuous with the plat and sill bands of the main range. Windows are 12-pane horned sashes, smaller in the upper storey, except for a tripartite window in the lower-storey outer bays, and inserted double panelled doors under overlights to the inner bays. In the R end wall the sill bands are continuous with the front. The upper storey has traces of earlier scribed roughcast, and has a 12-pane horned sash window upper L and small 2-pane sashes offset to the R in the middle and upper storeys. A window has been inserted between the 2 wings in the lower storey. An attached rear wing, under a separate hipped roof, retains a tripartite sash window above a gabled projection in the upper storey, with a 12-pane horned sash to its L in the middle storey, but is otherwise altered. The L end has an added bay set further back, which has a 6-pane late C19 horned sash windows in the middle and upper storeys and inserted windows on the R side. Late C20 additions are at the rear.

Interior

Modernised internally with altered layout and no earlier features than late C19 decorative-tile floor inside the entrance.

Reason for designation

Listed as a late Gerogian hotel retaining original character to its front, and for its contribution to the historic townscape.