The Royal Station Hotel, Newcastle. Left: Central bays. Right: Seen from the station, adjacent to it.
The Royal Station Hotel, Newcastle, was designed by John Dobson (1787-1865). The first 10 bays were built in 1847-50; the hotel was extended in 1891. Constructed of sandstone ashlar, with a dark slate roof, it stands next to the Newcastle Central Station on Neville Street, Newcastle, and is a Grade II listed building. Like the "magnificent and unequalled station," this splendid hotel was formally opened by Queen Victoria in August 1850 ("Her Majesty's Visit").
The hotel has an appropriately grand entrance in a projecting near-central bay, with steps up through ornate ironwork supporting a glass canopy. It has a mansard roof, and Dobson has made a feature of pedimented dormers. According to Elaine Denby, all this puts the hotel among a "small group of pioneering railway hotels" which demonstrate a "transition from neo-classical to the beginnings of revivalism." More specifically, Denby writes that here John Dobson "moved towards a more sophisticated French Renaissance revival treatment well suited to the character of northern stonework." Contrasting the hotel with the more Italianate Royal Station Hotel recently built in Hull, Denby continues, "Some Roman Renaissance details may be recognised in the rustication and the window pediments, but Parisian ideas show in the mansard roof and central pavilion, speaking more of the Louvre than of the Palazzo Farnese" (48). Most of the original 10-bay building is shown on the left above. While greatly increasing the number of rooms, from 50-133, the late Victorian extension was sympathetic to the original design.
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Photographs by Jacqueline Banerjee. You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. [Click on both the images to enlarge them.]
Bibliography
Denby, Elaine. Grand Hotels: Reality and Illusion. London: Reaktion Books, 1998. See Chapter 3, "Europe Burgeoning."
"Her Majesty's Visit." The Newcastle Courant, 23 August 1850, Part I, p. 4, column 4. 19c.British Library Newspapers. Web. 30 December 2011.
Station Hotel, Newcastle Upon Tyne. British Listed Buildings. Web. 30 December 2011.
Last modified 9 August 2021