Description

DORCHESTER STREET
(North side)

Nos.10-16 (even)
Argyle Hotel
05/08/75

GV II

Includes: Nos. 13 AND 14 MANVERS STREET. Hotel, offices and shops. c1845. Possibly by HE Goodridge (Jackson).
MATERIALS: Limestone ashlar, slate roofs.
PLAN: L-plan block with emphasised quadrant corner, facing Bath Spa station (qv), and incorporating Nos. 13 and 14 Manvers Street.
STYLE: Traditional Bath classical detail.
EXTERIOR: Three storeys and attic, one:five:one:two windows, all glazing bar sashes in moulded architraves (except No. 7). Six-pane to attic storey above twelve and deep twelve-pane sashes, with doors or display windows to ground floor. End bays left and right have large panelled doors under transom lights, in pilasters, panelled to left, and paired to right, with further shop doors to recessed section, left. Quadrant has `in-antis' Ionic columns with Doric antae, these carried through also in attic, further single bay each end in similar detail with pilasters. Column and pilaster bases spring from cornice above shop fascias, and carry full entablature, with dentil cornice and blocking to attic. In Dorchester Street, No. 7, first wide bay, with paired pilasters, has tripartite windows, with four:six:four-pane to attic above twelve-pane sash with narrow sidelights, and similar fifteen-pane at first floor, with impost band and under sunk arch with archivolt. Return to left plain, earlier buildings demolished. Manvers Street similar bay, in paired pilasters, but all set slightly higher than the adjoining bays. Four:six:four-pane sashes above single sixteen-pane sash, with 4:8:4-pane sash with impost band and architrave, under sunk elliptical arch with archivolt. Panelled pilaster shopfront has door each side with margin pane transom light. Pilasters taken through attic and into blocking course. To right, set back, are two-bays with six, twelve, and eighteen-pane sashes, central and end pilasters carried through, above shopfront with similar flanking doors. Return end is plain, in squared rubble. Rear has projecting full height wing with staggered Six and twelve-pane sashes, set back centre also has various glazing bar sashes.
INTERIOR: Not inspected.
HISTORY: The design is matched by the Royal Hotel (qv) on the opposite side of Manvers Street, and the two buildings make a formal entrance to the street leading to the city centre. That this new entrance was created as a result of the arrival of the railway to Bath only adds to their interest. The Argyle was the Temperance Hotel for many years: a painted sign at frieze level read 'FAMILY AND COMMERCIAL HOUSE' (photo in the National Monument Record). Its ground floor was occupied early in the C20th by a branch of W.H. Smith's.
SOURCES: (Jackson N: Nineteenth Century Bath - Architects and Architecture: Bath: 1991: 74).

Listing NGR: ST7523464396

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26674337

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.

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