3-008-818 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Imperial Hotel at Great Malvern, 1862. '...a truly magnificent building...situated on the east side of the West-Midland Railway...The Imperial Hotel has been built from designs and under the superintendence of E. W. Elmslie...The style of the building is Continental Gothic; it is built of red brick, with Bath and Forest stone dressings, at a cost of £25,000. It...[has] a subbasement for heating apparatus and cellaring. The basement consists of a kitchen of a baronial character, the usual domestic offices, baths of every kind, with separate entrances for ladies and gentlemen...On the south front...is a large oriel window, three stories high, fitted with elegant tracery...On the same front is a tower 146ft. high, containing the grand staircase, the top story of which is at an altitude of 100ft., and is intended for a belvidere and summer smoking-room. The roofs are covered with green and purple slates laid in bands, and the ridges, formed of the same, have an ornamental iron cresting. The boundary walls are built of blue lias stone, with Bath stone dressings, and finished with ornamental iron railings. The gate piers are surmounted with ornamental lamps, and the gates are of wrought iron, richly foliated'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.