Building record 5434 - Royal Hotel, 7 Nantwich Road, Crewe

<1> Cheshire East Council, 2010, Cheshire East LDF Local List of Historic Buildings (Report). SCH5404.

Village/Town: Crewe, The Royal Hotel, Nantwich Road, CW2 6AG
The first Crewe post office stood near the railway station as The Royal Hotel, built late 19th century. This highly detailed brick building has a strong presence.

<2> Turley Heritage, 2018, Heritage Statement: Royal Hotel, Nantwich Road, Crewe, R4317 (Client Report). SCH8704.

Heritage Statement prepared in 2018 in support of proposed alterations to the Royal Hotel and construction of a car park on land to its rear, Nantwich Road, Crewe. The Royal Hotel is a locally listed building. It is of historic interest as a hotel associated with the expansion of Crewe following introduction of the railway and the establishment of Crewe Railway Station. The Morris and Co Directory of 1864 and the Post Office Directory of 1878 lists the Royal Hotel as a public establishment. The County Court was held at the Royal Hotel once a month. This suggests that a hotel had been built on the site by 1864. In 1878 the Royal Hotel was also used as a meeting place of the Masonic Lodge. No record was found of the Royal Hotel serving as a post office in 1864 or 1878. The extract of the 1877 Ordnance Survey map shows a ‘Hotel’ at the south west of the site. There was a group of rectilinear buildings set back from the road at the north of the site. The railway was located to the east of the site, and was reached via Nantwich Road. The surrounding land was still in agricultural use.

The primary architectural interest of the Royal Hotel lies in the south Nantwich Road elevation and the plainer Pedley Street elevation. The building has been altered including removal of a broached spire sometime after 1946, additional windows, removal of chimneys and the addition of modern signage. The outbuildings to the north of the building were added to the site and have been heavily altered. The range to the north of the hotel is likely to have been reconstructed using the interior wall of a previous building on the site which now forms an outer wall. (1)

<3> Salford Archaeology (part of Centre for Applied Archaeology), 2019, Historic Building Investigation: Royal Hotel, Nantwich Road, Crewe, Cheshire East, R4355 (Client Report). SCH8764.

Following on from the production of a heritage statement in 2018, a building investigation report was produced in 2019 for the Royal Hotel, Crewe, in advance of proposed re-development, including some alterations to the nineteenth century hotel, also the demolition of redundant outbuildings in the rear yard. The hotel is not a nationally listed building, but is locally listed.

The precise date of origin of the Royal Hotel is uncertain, although it was open by 1846 when the first Post Office in Crewe was established in a room at the hotel. The building was extended several times, including documented episodes in 1897, 1903 and 1946, with the extension of 1897 seemingly replacing much of the original hotel. The later extension included the addition of a building to the western end and outbuildings to the north, which survive extant in an altered condition; these outbuildings form the main focus of this report.

The Royal Hotel represents an exceptional visual example of 19th-century architecture used in the construction of hotels. The use of four-pointed arched windows and decorative terracotta tiles are a fine example of Gothic and Jacobian influenced style. Whilst the northern outbuilding is plain in design, it was a functional building that was intended for use as a stable and garage to the hotel. However, in view of its current poor condition and the extent to which the original fabric has been altered, the outbuilding is considered to be of low relative significance, and its demolition will not constitute substantial harm to the locally listed Royal Hotel.