The Antelope Hotel

Summary

Hotel and restaurant, once a coaching inn. C16 possibly reusing C15 fabric; remodelled in the C18; refaced and roof raised in the early C19; refitted in 1939.

Reasons for Designation

The Antelope Hotel, 8 High Street, Poole is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:
* for the survival of some C16 fabric, and good quality later internal features which are understood to survive including a Jacobean-style staircase with integral electric light;
* the handsome front elevation has a strong street presence, displaying elements from throughout its development.

Historic interest:
* the hotel is thought to be the oldest continuous licenced premises in Poole and is of interest as part of the development of the town’s hospitality;
* for its role in early coastal lifesaving services in Poole.

Group value:
* with the neighbouring listed buildings which are broadly contemporary in date, both in their origins and later alterations, showing evidence of development on the High Street.

History

The Antelope Hotel was probably first built as a coaching house, with the earliest recorded date for a licence being 1666. It later became an inn and then a hotel in the early C19. It is thought to be the oldest licenced premises in continuous use in Poole.

The building was once two storeys with a mansard roof; an additional storey and new roof were added in the early C19. Between 1865 and 1882 the Poole lifeboat crew, alerted by a rocket to a call, would muster at the hotel to be taken by a horse brake (a fast cart) to their boat which was stationed at North Haven Point, Sandbanks. This stopped when a new lifeboat house was constructed on Fisherman’s Dock.

The building was refitted in 1939 when a C15 stone fireplace was discovered. A hand-painted sign on the roof parapet proclaiming ‘Family and Yachting Inn’, as shown in an 1835 engraving when the hotel was a posting inn on the route to London, was painted over after 2003.

Details

Hotel and restaurant, once a coaching inn. C16 possibly reusing C15 fabric; remodelled in the C18; refaced and roof raised in the early C19; refitted in 1939.

MATERIALS: dark-brown brick with red-brick dressings and terracotta tile roofs behind a flat parapet, with tall red-brick end stacks. There is some rubble stone construction to the carriage entrance and former warehouse, which is mainly of red and blue brick.

PLAN: built on an L-shaped plan with a long rear left wing, thought to have been a wholesale warehouse, and right-hand carriage entrance.

EXTERIOR: the principal elevation of the building is three storeys and five bays east to west, with a two-storey range containing a carriage entrance to the right. The near-symmetrical front has a central doorway with timber cinquefoil attached columns and bell capitals to a bracketed porch; above which is a canted first-floor oriel window with a panelled apron; and above again is a blind lunette to the second-floor. On the ground floor, to the right is an early-C20 shop front with pilasters, panelling beneath three windows, and a glazed door, with transom lights above; this was once the bar entrance. To the left are two sash windows with six panes to the top sashes and lettered leaded lights to the bottom, both under rubbed and gauged red-brick flat arches. There are also flat brick arches above the six-over-six-pane unhorned sash windows to the first floor, and three-over-six-pane sashes to second floor. A large late-C19 lantern is fixed to the right of the oriel window.

The right-hand, two-storey, two-window range has a segmental-arched carriage entrance beneath a C20 canted oriel window and a right-hand blocked segmental-arched window. At the rear is a half-hipped roof and late-C19 two-over-two-pane sash windows in exposed boxes.

The eastern rear range has a half-hipped roof and C19 two-over-two-pane sash windows. The former wholesale warehouse range at the rear to the west has a partial rubble-stone plinth, and shallow pilasters between cambered brick arches to six-over-six-pane sash windows.

INTERIOR: the ground floor and much of the interior was remodelled in the late C20, but C19 joinery (such as boarded doors and panelled shutters) and a C19 Jacobean-style stair with barley-twist bannisters and integral newel electric-lights is thought to survive. There is a fireplace with a Purbeck marble lintel to ground floor left, and another with shaped corbels and hollow-chamfered lintel. The ceiling beams are exposed. Additionally, the RCHME note some C16 details in the south-west rear wing.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

412475

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Hillier, J, A Portfolio of Old Poole, (1983), 40
An Inventory for the Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset: Volume II South-East Part 1, (1970), 259

Websites
Heritage Gateway: Dorset Historic Environment Record, accessed 17/08/2022 from https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?resourceID=1012&uid=MDO27337
Poole Lifeboat Station: Poole’s Mayor unveils Blue Plaque at the Antelope Inn, accessed 17/08/2022 from http://www.poolelifeboats.org.uk/2016/07/27/7214/
Poole History, accessed 17/08/2022 from http://www.poolehistory.org.uk/node/311517

End of official list entry

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