Charing Cross Hotel, City of Westminster, London

Summary

Charing Cross Hotel, former railway terminus hotel to the Charing Cross Railway (an off-shoot of the South Eastern Railway), built 1863-1864 to the designs of EM Barry, constructed by the Lucas brothers. The two upper floors were reconstructed in about 1953 to the designs of FJ Wills and Son following bomb damage in 1941. The hotel was extensively refurbished in the late-C20.

Description

MATERIALS: yellow stock brick with dressings and facings of artificial stone and extensive use of terracotta, chiefly used in balustrades, cornice brackets and pilaster capitals, manufactured by Blanchards.

PLAN: ‘L’-shaped in plan, with the principal range running south-west to north-east running parallel with The Strand, and a wing running part way southwards down Villiers Street. The reception to the hotel is located at the ground floor of the pavilion at the east end of the principal range. To the right (west) of the entrance are arched openings, now (2019) mostly in filled with glazed retail units (see EXTERIOR), but some still open to provide access through to the station concourse at the rear.

Internally, the main access to the hotel floors is by a grand staircase located in the wing, with back stairs providing service. The first floor of the hotel accommodates former reception rooms, including the ballroom, dining room and conference rooms, with bedrooms in the storeys above accessed by axial corridors on each floor.

EXTERIOR: the hotel is supported on a substructure of original brick arches, double-height under the front of the hotel, and said to be up to three levels deep in places. The hotel has five storeys with the arched openings at the ground floor into the main station, and two attic storeys above.

The principal entrance faces The Strand and is a richly detailed composition in the Second Empire and mixed Renaissance style. The palatial front has a profusion of aedicules to the elevation, recalling the original French pavilion roofs and their attic windows. Three window-wide pavilions flank the central range of twelve windows. The ground floor is arcaded to the main range under an altered, balustraded canopy with pierced floral panels. The arcade openings have smooth, rendered arches, mostly infilled with modern glazed shop fronts, but some providing access to the station concourse beyond; light brown and black scagliola panels are apparent in some of the access routes but it is unclear whether these are original. The hotel entrance is at the left (east) pavilion, a C20 glazed structure flanked by granite columns with ornate capitals, and a Classical entablature with panels featuring the Charing Cross symbol and the word HOTEL. The flanking brickwork here, and along the Villiers Street elevation, has bands of nail-head decoration. The pavilion at the west end, formerly the cab exit, retains its open arched entrance to the station with a porch comprising a Classical pediment supported by scrolled brackets on granite columns with ornate capitals. The entablature and pediment include carved representations of the Charing Cross symbol. The pavilions have glazed, timber, barrel-vaulted ‘winter garden’ loggias over both entrances; the upper floors have tripartite pilastered or columned loggia screens in front of deep set windows, channelled quoin piers and enriched entablatures. The principal elevation has a pierced, enriched balustrade to the first floor balcony with vases capping dies, entablatures with pseudo-parapets to the floors above with ornamental stone balconettes and pierced work or cast iron balustrades. Across the principal elevation are heavy storey cornices and courses of nail-head detailing. The window openings are richly detailed in the form of aediculae on all floors, pilasters with capitals and heavily moulded entablatures. Windows are single arched on the first floor, coupled lights on the second and fourth floors, the latter semi-circular arched, and replacement square-paned with rectangular top-lights on the third floor. The top attic storeys are plain brick, and recessed, with multi-paned sash windows.

The Villiers Street (east) elevation has an additional understorey due to the steeply falling ground southwards. It is also a balanced design with three bay ends, a single bay projection and then a twelve bay centre. There is much artificial stone decoration with aprons on brackets, heavy friezes and cornices and window surrounds at all levels, with engaged Corinthian columns on two floors at either end. The centrepiece at the first floor level has a full width glazed balcony projecting on brackets. The side pavilions are framed by rusticated pilasters. A bridge with nine bay glazed arcade leads over Villiers Street to the annexe of 1877-1881 which accommodates 90 additional rooms (the extension is not included in the listing). The south end of the Villiers Street wing is treated similarly but is largely obscured by the station rebuilding of 1988-1992. It is five bays wide and framed by massive chimneys which rise above the two 1951 storeys.

The much shorter Craven Street (west) wing is largely hidden and is much less elaborately decorated, but has four storeys of pilastered windows and two storeys of plain 1953 design above a heavy cornice. A weatherboarded extension at the level of the station concourse is a C20 extension to provide additional accommodation to retail units.

The rear elevation (south), which forms the backdrop to the station concourse, originally had three storeys of windows and a blind storey with a central clock visible within the arched roof of the 1864 Hawkshaw roof, but the present much lower roof fits closely over the two windowed storeys. The ground floor has a large arch to the left (west), once the cab-road exit, flanked to the right by a late-C20 entrance to the underground, and twelve smaller arches, all faced in render, which contain modern retail businesses in glazed units. The five central arches are framed by brick pilasters and the upper floor has thirteen arched windows, the central five fronted by a balcony with a quatrefoil parapet topped by vases and supported on five large shaped brackets. The return on the east wing has a pedimented door, once an entrance into the hotel and buffet room, with three bulls-eye openings above and stepped arched windows lighting a staircase above, one of which is a large, blocked, arched opening.

INTERIOR: the ground floor of the hotel building is heavily altered in two principal areas: the former railway facilities and spaces now occupied by retail units and openings leading to the station concourse, and the reception area of the hotel at the east end of the principal range, both extensively remodelled in the C20. These areas are of lesser interest. Within the functioning space of the hotel, however, axial corridors on all floors are richly detailed; some with arched coffered ceilings supported on pilasters and heavy cornices, and others with a series of vaulted ceilings lit by Diocletian windows. The main, sweeping grand staircase is located in the wing, lit by arched windows at the half-landings. The panelled open well has decorative plaster work, and Corinthian columns at each landing; the stairs have stone treads with a wooden banister atop decorative pierced iron panels.

On the first floor of the wing is the ballroom (named as such in 2019), the former coffee room, a richly decorated room square in plan with broad recesses on each side and splayed angles across the corners, with a plainer, shallow later extension to the south side. This room has full height panelling, with heavy and deep entablatures, treated with a Corinthian order expressed in brown and light purple scagliola-covered columns and pilasters. Large winged female half figures in plaster adorn the consoles which buttress the arches to the recesses. Saint (1986) speculates that the figures could be by Raffaele Monti. Above the cornices, rich plasterwork arches and panels support the gently-dished ceiling with corner discs and small scale details and symbols including that of the Charing Cross and South Eastern railway companies. The current (2019) dining room, and bar area, formerly the lounge, faces The Strand on the first floor. This room has an elaborate plaster, coffered ceiling, decorative plaster wall panels and a large marble fireplace. Other former ‘public’ rooms now serve as conference facilities; they have panelled walls but are relatively plain. The hotel bedrooms have been modernised with ensuite facilities.

The service areas to the hotel were not inspected (2019).

History

Historical sources for this area of London, and the development of the railways, are numerous. The history section is a summary of the information available.

The line into Charing Cross was promoted by the Charing Cross Railway Company, effectively an off-shoot of the South Eastern Railway, following a parliamentary bill of 1859. Work began thereafter, under the supervision of the engineer (Sir) John Hawksworth, on the new Hungerford railway bridge and the station, the line opening in January 1864. Minutes of the Charing Cross Railway Company of May 1862 first mention the building of the hotel in July of that year, EM Barry was appointed architect with Charles and Thomas Lucas as builders. The design of the hotel was no easy matter, as the site was awkward and L-shaped, and on south-sloping ground. The railway company reserved the whole of the ground floor for booking offices, waiting rooms and publicly accessible refreshment rooms operated by the hotel, the interior of one of which was designed by Owen Jones, a noted Victorian decorator, but which no longer survives. The hotel entrance was located through the pavilion at the east end of The Strand-facing, principal range. The pavilion at the west end provided the cab and omnibus exit from the arrival platform of the station, according to The Builder (1864, p 877). Internally, however, distinctive rooms were located on the first floor, including the former coffee room (known as the ballroom in 2019) on the first floor of the wing. At the north-east corner over the entrance was the former lounge, now (2019) the dining room. A series of public rooms at the first floor of the principal range (used as conference rooms in 2019) had bedroom floors above, with an extra storey added at a late stage in the design to add a further 50 rooms. The hotel opened in 1865 with 214 rooms, and was extensively reported on in The Builder of 3 December and 24 December 1864. The total cost, including furnishings came to over £150,000. Initially, the hotel did well but by 1876 an extension was required on a site bought by the company on the east side of Villiers Street. This extension (known in 2019 as the Buckingham Wing) was begun by the Lucas Brothers in 1877, to the design of the architect John Fish, and completed in 1881. As The Builder notes (8 January, 1881, p 54) it is ‘lofty but unpretentious’, far plainer in treatment than the main hotel building, with a flat roof rather than the mansard originally planned. The extension is noted as having fire-proofed floors and originally had a separate entrance with a main stair on the south elevation. It was always intended that the basement and rooms on the ground floor through to the second floor were to be let for storage and offices with bedroom floors above. Although this extension is excluded from the listing, the bridge across Villiers Street linking the annexe to the main hotel is included.

Barry designed the forecourt, shared with the station, which originally had boundary walls with piers topped by gas lamps, iron railings and two single-storey lodges as well as the replica of the original ‘Charing Cross’ (Queen Eleanor Memorial Cross, listed at Grade II*) in the centre, but this area was reconfigured and reduced when The Strand was widened. In the 1990s it is understood that new railings and gatepiers were installed on the new alignment, in the character of the originals but not following the original arrangement.

Notable changes to the hotel include the addition of iron verandas to the exterior of the reception rooms of the principal range between 1880 and 1900. Probably at this time, the pedimented entrances to the pavilions were crudely boxed in to provide extensions to the first floor rooms above. An extension was added to the south-east corner in 1897-1898. Bomb damage in 1941 resulted in the loss of the spired turrets on the roof of the wing, the distinctive ridge stacks of the principal range and the Renaissance-styled pavilion roofs. The two top storeys of the hotel were rebuilt in 1953 in a simple classical style to the designs of FJ Wills and Son. In 1957 there was a campaign of interior decoration when the present ballroom was restored.

The ground floor spaces beneath the hotel are of lesser interest. They were originally used as waiting rooms, booking offices, luggage stores and toilets for the railway station (illustrated in OS 5 inch: 1 mile, 1894) but have been extensively altered. A refreshment room, with interior decoration by Owen Jones, beneath the east wing was accessible from the station and the hotel. Saint records that this room has 'completely disappeared' (p 2, 1986). These ground floor spaces were remodelled in successive campaigns during the C20 notably from 1985 when retail units and a mezzanine were built resulting in structural change and the likely removal of most historic finishes. Following a change in ownership in the late-C20, the hotel was extensively refurbished, including the reception, and the bedrooms were upgraded resulting in some loss of historic finishes and fabric.

Edward Middleton Barry (1830-1880) was the third son of the noted architect Sir Charles Barry. Initially trained in the office of TH Wyatt, Barry joined his father’s practice and continued there until his father’s death in 1860. He has a number of listed buildings to his name including the reconstructed Covent Garden in 1857 (Grade I); and the adjoining Floral Hall (Grade II); the arcade to the new palace at Westminster 1864 (Grade I); Temple Gardens (1878, Grade II) and the Great Ormond Street Hospital Chapel (1871-1876, Grade II*). He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1869 and became its Professor of Architecture in 1873.

Reasons for Listing

Charing Cross Hotel, built 1863-1864 to the designs of EM Barry, with the two upper floors reconstructed in about 1953 to the designs of FJ Wills and Son, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons.

Architectural interest:

* an ebullient design in the French Renaissance style by a noted architect of the period, richly and consistently detailed, with characterful elevations particularly those facing The Strand and Villiers Street;
* built with craftsmanship, using good quality materials including extensive use of terracotta and artificial stone;
* opulent finishes to the interiors of the hotel including the grand stairs and public rooms of the hotel, particularly the former coffee house and lounge, where sculpted details in scagliola and plasterwork are of high quality.

Historic interest:

* a good example of a London terminus hotel built to accommodate visitors from home and the continent at a time of railway expansion;

Group value:

* with a number of listed buildings nearby, including the Grade II* listed Eleanor Cross in the hotel forecourt.

External Links

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