Building record 14998 - 'The Royal George', King Street, Knutsford, Cheshire

<1> English Heritage, 2005, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest, 1388389 (Digital Archive). SCH4666.

Coaching inn and hotel. Late C18 with later additions and alterations, possibly incorporating structural remains of an earlier building. Brick with Welsh slate roof. PLAN: deep plan comprising 3 parallel ranges, the rear range forming the assembly-rooms lit by 4 tall round-arched windows. Circular wig-room in wing expressed externally as shallow projecting bow. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys, 4-window range. Main entrance off covered way which runs through the building to the right. Segmental archway with stuccoed voussoirs and quoins to covered way, with paired 4-pane sash windows above with stuccoed keys to flat-arched gauged brick heads. Late C19 2-storeyed canted bay window to the left of the entry, and projecting full-height 2-window range beyond. INTERIOR: assembly room and circular 'wig room' to rear survive substantially unaltered from late C18. Plaster work in assembly room comprising low dado and tall wall panels, with rosette frieze below cornice, and a high frieze over, a repetitive design of garlands and wreaths. Musical emblems in the triglyph frieze above. Plaster medallions to ceiling. Coved recess beneath gallery in end wall, with ornamental plasterwork forming architrave. Pair of fireplaces in long wall, with musical motifs in entablature, and fluted shafts each side. Similar, but less ornate plaster-work in present dining room which has Palladian window in gable end. Late C18 staircase with moulded tread ends, turned spindles and swept and moulded rail.

<2> National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, 2002, An Archaeological Evaluation at 'The Royal George', King Street, Knutsford, Cheshire, R2417 (Client Report). SCH4245.

An archaeological evaluation was undertaken on land to the rear of 'The Royal George', Knutsford. The buildings which occupy the site date to the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries and include The Royal George Hotel, an eighteenth century, Grade II listed coaching inn.

The evaluation comprised eight trial trenches, five in an area occupied by a car park, two immediately to the south of the main Royal George buildings, and one inside an area of sheds/stables. No in situ deposits pre-dating the late eighteenth century were identified and most of the excavated material dates to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
In Trench I, a cess pit and well/water butt were recorded, along with some postholes, which may represent a lightly built structure constructed against the western edge of the property. The deposits excavated in Trenches II, III, IV and V are consistent with the area having been use as gardens throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century. A north-south drain in Trench II may have been associated with the silk mill known to have been located to the south, or alternatively, it was intended to drain the plot under investigation.

In general, the lack of medieval and early post medieval material suggests that this plot was empty and/or unused during those periods.Trenches VI and VII contained significantly more seventeenth and eighteenth century material, although this was from disturbed contexts.

The difference in height between the cobbled way and the southern half of the site was created by terracing into what was probably a north-facing slope. There remains potential for the preservation early post medieval material, particulary at the eastern end of the site.