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Tuesday, 22-May-2012 10:17:37 BST
Architectural Town Walk
Art Deco King's Hall
On the corner of Terrace Road with Marine Parade is Belgrave House, with a door case with Egyptian caps on its Terrace Road side. On the opposite side of the T-junction the large block of new flats and shops is built on the site of the Waterloo Hotel, which was burnt in 1919 and eventually replaced in 1934 by the large, Art Deco King's Hall.
Opposite the south end of the Belle Vue Hotel the present jetty marks the site of the lifeboat slip built in 1863. The lifeboat house was originally towards the north end of the Promenade. Later it was moved to Queen's Road. The lifeboat was hauled along the streets to this slip on a carriage by horse.
Along the Promenade and north from the King's Hall shops and flats
Along the Promenade and north from the King's Hall shops and flats, nos. 32-4 Marine Terrace are stuccoed and marked on John Wood's plan of 1834; the detail, however, is almost certainly all mid-Victorian. The north end group, nos 57-62, up to the former Queen's Hotel, is of ca. 1868.
On the shore, just south of the Queen's Hotel, was the 19th-century Public Bath, built in 1810 and demolished in 1892.
The former Queen's Hotel, now Ceredigion County Offices and home of Ceredigion Archives
The former Queen's Hotel, now Ceredigion County Offices and home of Ceredigion Archives, was designed by architects Hayward and Davis in a 'Hotel de Ville' style and built by George Lumley of Aberystwyth for the Hafod Hotel Company or Mid Wales Hotel Company. It was opened in 1866. The plans were signed by Davis, and the hotel is contemporary with, though more stolid than, Hayward's Duke of Cornwall hotel in Plymouth, lacking the virtuoso roofscape of the Plymouth building. The Cambrian News published visitor lists during the summer months. The 83-bedroom hotel had special ground-floor provision for the infirm. Quartz and ore panels are retained beneath the ground-floor windows, and there is extravagant stained-glass on the mezzanine. Vestiges of former splendour remain in the Archives search room, with its acanthus plasterwork, mantelpiece and mirror, and in the former New Assembly rooms, now the 'Cambrian Hall', with 'Q H' on the iron spandrels. Post-1945 the hotel was converted by G. R. Bruce, County Architect, into the County Offices.
Beyond the Queen's Hotel Victoria Terrace broke the stucco tradition. As part of a large 1860s scheme for improving the town J. P. Seddon first proposed a new crescent here in 1865. In 1868 he designed Victoria Terrace as a row of 25 houses, to be polychrome Gothic, in three colours of brick with stone detail, but only three houses were built, at expense, and the scheme was abandoned. The three houses, and especially Victoria House on the corner, have been painted over, so that Seddon's polychrome is today invisible.
Victoria Terrace was continued northwards after 1874 and a further twelve houses were built, still Gothic, but mechanically so, with parts executed by Szlumper and Aldwinkle; another fire destroyed part of this terrace in 1998 which has now been rebuilt.
At the far end of the Promenade is Alexandra Hall, of 1896-8 by C. J. Ferguson, built as a women's hall of residence, of four to five storeys in stone, but with five shaped gables for variety. The building is now undergoing restoration and conversion to flats.
Right at the Queen's Hotel
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