Description

LANCASTER

SD4761NW MARKET STREET
1685-1/6/174 (South side)
Nos.75-83 (Odd)
Royal King's Arms Hotel

GV II

Includes: Royal King's Arms Hotel & Waterstones Booksellers
KING STREET.
Hotel and shop. Rebuilt on its original site in 1879 and
altered 1988. Designed by Holtom and Connor in the Northern
Renaissance style. Sandstone ashlar and ashlar dressings, with
bricks at the rear. Slate roofs with coped gables. Reversed
L-plan on the corner of Market Street and King Street, and
extending along both, with the entrance on Market Street. The
facade is a balanced composition of 2 similar halves, each
symmetrical in itself, on either side of a narrow canted bay
on the corner.
The facade on Market Street has 4 storeys and an attic, and 5
bays, including a slightly recessed 3-bay centre. The ground
floor is articulated by 6 Tuscan pilasters carrying an
entablature which extends along the facades on both streets.
The entrance is in the centre and has a round-arched,
hollow-chamfered doorway of banded rustication, set between
pilasters on high bases; each of these has 2 vertical panels
decorated with arabesques, while above is a scrolled pediment.
The windows in the upper floors have 2, 3 and 2 lights; those
on the first floor also have a transom and have pediments,
triangular to the sides and segmental in the centre. The
central light of the second-floor window accommodates a niche,
and on the third floor is an inscription which reads:
'ESTABLISHED AD 1629 REBUILT AD 1879'. The outer bays of these
upper storeys contain a very tall oriel window lighting a
double-height room; above is a tall pedimented gable, which is
decorated with a niche containing an urn filled with a plant,
a motif which is repeated in all the gables.
The canted bay on the corner has, on the ground floor, a shop
window which extends one bay into Market Street and along all
of the King Street frontage; above is a round-headed French
window with a balcony on the first floor, a blind aedicule on
the third floor, and an open segmental pediment in front of a
chimney.
The facade to King Street is virtually the same as on Market
Street, except that it is concave in plan, and the end bays do
not have oriel windows, though the right-hand one did
originally.

Listing NGR: SD4748361694

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26585867

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Central Leinster: Kildare, Laois and Offaly (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  Derbyshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Pevsner's Architectural Glossary (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)
• 
  Gloucestershire 2: The Vale and The Forest of Dean: Vale and Forest of Dean Pt. 2 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Georgian Style and Design for Contemporary Living
• 
  Specifications for Building Conservation: Volume 1: External Structure: Practical Examples v. 2