The Boltons, Earl's Court, Kensington and Chelsea

Summary

Public house-cum-hotel, built 1890-1892 to the designs of speculative builder-architect George Whitaker.

Description

The former Bolton Hotel (most recently known as The Boltons) is a substantial late-Victorian pub-cum-hotel, built 1890-1892 to the designs of the speculator builder-architect George Whitaker.

MATERIALS: red brick with painted render.

PLAN: five stories, with cellar. Open-plan ground floor (having originally been a typically compartmentalised arrangement of the 1890s) with two amalgamated function spaces on the first floor. The upper storeys consist of two storeys of commercial hotel accommodation and a garret (possibly for staff accommodation or lower-class rooms) above to the fourth floor.

EXTERIOR: large and elaborate corner-plot pub in the popular Flemish Revival style of the late C19. The design is centred around a large octagonal turret to the junction of Earl's Court Road and Brompton Road, with ornamental urns, shaped gables (integrating a chimney stack to the east) and flanking dormers to the upper storey. The façade is divided by rendered string course bands and a projecting canted bay features to the south on the first and second storeys. Sash windows are set into rendered surrounds throughout, capped with decorative panels featuring garlands set beneath scrolled pediments. The ground floor has a series of arched plate-glass windows on panelled stall risers, divided into regular bays by broad granite pilasters. Several windows occupy the position of original entrances, these introduced following the opening-out of the pub plan from the 1980s.

INTERIOR: the ground-floor level has been opened-out to form one undivided bar area, with the formerly central island servery replaced with a long bar to the south-west end wall. The fielded-panel counter front here appears to be of the 1890s, suggesting that this is a portion of the original servery, though this has been truncated and altered to fit in its present position. To the north of the servery are a set of broad, open stairs with cast-iron splat balusters, which would have originally led from the saloon bar to the first-floor function rooms and the hotel accommodation. At the landing level are a pair of Arts & Crafts style stained windows with floral motifs. The recessed section adjacent to the stairs was formerly a snug set-off the main saloon bar area. The majority of features of ‘Victorian’ appearance are later additions, forming part of the pub’s rebranding as ‘Whittaker’s Victorian Dining Room’ in around 1990, as part of which many reproduction features were introduced. The Corinthian columns were installed in two phases, in 1990 (to the west) and 1995 (to the east). Those to the east are of hollow steel pipe, with moulded resin capitals. Those to the west are thicker but probably also of steel, with arc-welding evident to the bases and capitals. No columns are shown on the historic plans. The ceiling is of plasterboard, installed in the 1990s and decorated to appear as Victorian in-situ plaster; this made apparent by the edges of the 8ft x 4ft sheets used here. Ceiling roses and cornices are of fibrous plaster, also dating to the 1990s, with the cornices displaying butt joints between sections, showing that they were also not formed in-situ. A mirrored screen in the north-east corner may have been relocated from elsewhere (detail drawings within a 1972 application for repurposing the old off-sales area as female toilets show screens of identical pattern), but the screen is first shown in its current location on the 1995 ‘as proposed’ plans, suggesting it was installed at this time following the earlier opening-out of the plan. The engraved mirror inserts to the screen are likely to be later additions. The geometric tiles around the bar respect its present form and location, thus dating these to 1990 or later.

The first floor principally consists of two amalgamated function rooms, with wall openings made to allow free circulation between the spaces. As part of the 1990 plans a new servery was introduced and the existing toilets to the north-east corner were replaced with a large catering kitchen, with a cold store and staff toilet. The two unified function rooms have been modernised in several phases from the late 1980s, with fragments of cornicing and a plaster archway with recessed panels (leading to the stairs) being the only features of probable 1890s date.

The second, third and fourth floor of the building, originally comprising two storeys of good commercial hotel accommodation and a garret above (possibly for staff or a lower class of guest) have a stronger degree of survival of historic layout and features such as fireplaces with surrounds (including several with tiles), architraves and cornices. Fire doors have been fitted to all rooms, and alterations associated with the change of use to staff accommodation (including the insertion of kitchens, utility rooms, bathrooms and a shower room) have been made. The fourth floor of the building accommodated further bedrooms which are smaller, and the decorative order of these rooms is simpler than the two lower residential floors, with narrow architraves, low skirting boards and no cornices. Aside from the changes related to fire separation between the stairs and corridor and provision of fire doors to all rooms, the principal area of later change on the fourth floor is restricted to the north-eastern part where the modern WC, bathroom and shower room have been added.

The cellar is largely unaltered, save for some pre-1978 concrete block walls leading to the barrel-drop and some post-1991 partitions in the north-west corner. Two historic doors survive, both framed plank doors.

History

The Bolton Hotel (as originally named) was built in 1890-1892 to the designs of George Whitaker, a speculating builder-architect who had been responsible for the housing on the west side of Nevern Square and other building schemes in Kensington. It stands on the site of Rich Lodge, which occupied much of Earl’s Court Square, the grounds of which were developed from the 1830s as the Edwardes Estate. The pub-cum-hotel replaced the Bolton Tavern, which had been a beerhouse from at least 1866 and had traded under the name The Bolton from 1870. The rebuilt Bolton Hotel was leased to the brewers Hoare and Company upon completion. The building formed part of a wider development, constructed by the local firm Turner and Withers together with 304-322 Earls Court Road and The Mansions in Old Brompton Road from 1890. This followed an initial unsuccessful application for the partial rebuilding and enlargement of the Bolton Tavern by Whitaker in 1889. Whitaker’s design for the pub is distinguished from the plain neighbouring residential work he undertook, with strong articulation of the parapet line, an ornate corner turret, and the use of contrasting rendered and brick sections to the façade marking the building out as a prominent landmark to the Old Brompton Road junction.

When opened in 1892, The Bolton Hotel had a compartmentalised plan, relatively typical of London pubs of the period. The ground floor consisted of a central servery with distinct bars radiating out, with access from both Old Brompton Road and Earls Court Road, and with two function rooms on the first floor and a series of hotel rooms to the upper floors. Plans dated 1972 held by the owners show the ground floor with a corridor leading back to a saloon bar (with a snug), with an off-sales compartment adjacent to this along Old Brompton Road. To the junction with Earls Court Road, the corner entrance led to the lounge bar and, back along Earls Court Road, the doors give access to the public bar and a vestibule (connecting to the public bar, the male toilets, and back of the saloon bar). There have been alterations to the ground and first-floor levels since the 1970s, resulting in the opening-out of the formerly distinct bar rooms, repositioning the servery along the south-western end wall and merging the two function rooms at first-floor level. With the alterations to the arrangement, many of the historic fittings were removed or replaced and new kitchens, WCs and other facilities were integrated. Consent was granted for the use of the first floor as a theatre in 1980, with floor plans drawn up in 1981, but this initiative was never realised. The pub was closed by Charrington’s brewery in 1989 underwent a change of name to ‘The George Whittaker’ (sic) and then (after a substantial internal remodelling) to ‘Whittaker’s World’ (subsequently becoming ‘Whittaker’s Victorian Dining Room’ in the early 1990s). The name reverted The Boltons when it became an Irish theme-pub under the O’Neill’s brand in 1996.

The Boltons is notable as one of the earliest gay pubs in London, establishing itself on the Earl’s Court scene alongside the Coleherne Arms on Old Brompton Road from the mid-1950s. Earl’s Court emerged as an important meeting place for the capital’s LGBTQ+ community, particularly in its 1970s and 1980s heyday, following the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967. The Coleherne emerged as London’s best-known gay pub into the 1970s, visited by notable figures including Freddie Mercury, Ian McKellen, Derek Jarman and Kenny Everett. The Boltons had, as Alim Kheraj notes in Queer London, a ‘seedier image, and was often frequented by sex workers and drug dealers’ (Kheraj, p67), the pub notably being subject to police raids in the 1980s, as reported in Capital Gay (1 June 1984, p7). Reports of police harassment and of the gay community in Earls Court were widespread in the 1980s, with complaints about the treatment Earls Court of the community from MPs recorded in the Kensington News and Post (25 May 1984, p1). Rising property prices and the gentrification of the Earls Court led to the closure or redevelopment of the major LGBTQ+ venues, including The Boltons in 1989. The 1990s saw the steady migration of the Earls Court gay scene to other parts of London, principally to Soho where many new bars and clubs opened.

Reasons for Listing

The Boltons, 326 Earls Court Road, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* for the quality of the elevations to the junction of Earl’s Court and Old Brompton Roads, which demonstrate an elaborate rendering of the Flemish Revival style, a popular and distinctive style in pub architecture of the 1890s;
* for the survival of key elements of the range of upper-floor rooms associated with the building’s function as a high-status pub and hotel of the 1890s.

Historic interest:

* as a landmark pub-cum-hotel of the late-Victorian ‘pub boom’, the scale, elaboration and strong external survival make it an important and expressive example of the immense investment in major urban pub building schemes in the last years of the C19.

Group value:

* as a major building within the Earl’s Court Square Conservation Area, which forms a key focal point for the surrounding contemporary development undertaken by George Whitaker, along with the Grade II-listed houses of 1888-1890 at 30-52 Earl’s Court Square, with which The Boltons shares distinctive architectural features.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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