Cemetery Hotel Public House

Details

SD81SE
335/0/10014
20-SEP-10

ROCHDALE
BURY ROAD
470
Cemetery Hotel Public House

II

Public House. Mid C19 with early-C20 decorative scheme by Crown Brewing Company Ltd of Bury. Red brick, painted white to rear. Shallow hipped slate roof.
PLAN: Three-room plan with a central corridor expanding into a wide drinking lobby with bar counter at the rear. The building forms the left end of a short terrace, and occupies an acutely-angled corner site.
EXTERIOR: Two-storey front elevation and three-storey rear elevation. Central entrance with depressed arch, now with modern canvas canopy, and six-panelled door with overlight. Public room to either side with shallow segmental-arched windows incorporating upper tripartite lights with stained leaded glass in an Art Nouveau design, and single lower lights of etched glass. Left, parlour window etched WINES & SPIRITS; right, vault window etched CROWN ALES. Three first-floor windows with segmental-arched heads and sill band; modern casement windows. Sill band and dentilled eaves band carried round curved corner of building, which incorporates curved window frames.
INTERIOR: Small inner porch with mosaic floor bearing the name 'Cemetery Hotel', and dado of vibrantly coloured green tiles with Prussian blue borders and Art Nouveau motifs in green, blue and orange. Above dado is cream rectangular tiling with decorative coloured border at ceiling level, and moulded cornice. Central corridor and drinking lobby have similar Art Nouveau dado tiles. The three rooms have half-glazed doors set in moulded architraves, with multi-pane leaded lights and three fielded panels to the lower part; room numbers attached. To the front right is the vault, now a pool room. Parquet floor and fitted bench seats with plain matchboard backs to all walls, now with attached cushioned panels. Fireplace in centre of east wall with cast-iron range inscribed 'L BUTTERWORTH, ROCHDALE'. To the front left is the parlour with four areas of fixed seating separated by part-glazed mahogany baffle screens with leaded multi-panes, ramped heads and end columns with fluting and volutes. There are also higher baffle screens to either side of the doorway. Above the seating is a band of panelling incorporating an oval panel to each area, now painted with the numbers 1 to 4. Angled west wall has a fireplace with ornate surround and overmantel incorporating classical columns and fluted pilasters, a circular mirror, and a hearth set within dark blue tiling. To the rear left is a small, wedge-shaped snug with fixed seating to all walls with bell pushes in the panel above, and a ramped timber baffle screen adjacent to the door. Reproduction fireplace and modern hatch to side of servery. Bar counter to rear of drinking lobby has slightly bowed front with fielded panels. Bar superstructure partly remodelled with late-C20 stained glass panels, and modern bar back fitting. Large cellars of rubble stone and brick, which are ground-floor level at the rear of the building.

HISTORY
The Cemetery Hotel is believed to have been built in the 1860s and appears on the first edition 1:2500 Ordnance Survey map of 1893. It took its name from the adjacent Rochdale Cemetery, a public cemetery which opened in 1855 on previously open fields (Grade II on the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest). It is likely that the pub was built in part to serve funeral parties attending burials at the cemetery. In the early C20 the pub was given a comprehensive interior refurbishment by the Crown Brewery Company Ltd. of Bury.

DESIGNATION DECISION
The Cemetery Hotel, 470 Bury Road, Rochdale, a mid-C19 public house with an early C20 decorative scheme, is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Planning: the pub retains the original C19 layout of individual rooms and an opened out corridor in front of the servery to form a drinking lobby, a regionally distinctive feature of historic pub planning in Lancashire and Yorkshire.
* Interior: for the intactness and good quality of the early-C20 decorative scheme by Crown Brewing Company of Bury, including Art Nouveau dado tiling, fixed seating, bell-pushes, part-glazed doors, windows with coloured and etched glass, and parquet flooring to the vault. Of particular note is the front parlour with ramped and part-glazed baffle screens with fluting and volutes to the end columns, and classically detailed mantelpiece to the fireplace.
* Group value: the pub was built in an initially rural location most probably in part to serve funeral parties from the adjacent Grade II listed Rochdale Cemetery, a public cemetery opened in 1855, the close association apparent in the choice of pub name.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

508433

Legacy System:

LBS

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