Description:
The Royal Talbot ceased to be a hotel between the wars and became the Headquarters of Georges and Co. Ltd. In a bombing raid in 1941 it lost its top two storeys, along with No 3 Bath Street and Nos 4 and 6 Victoria Street. Post-war the buildings were patched-up and used as offices, finally becoming vacant in the early 1980s. Restoration of the envelope of Nos 4 and 5 Bath Street had been undertaken in 1986 as part of the Bath Street refurbishment, but little of the fabric of No 3 or the Royal Talbot could be salvaged. The external front facades were held up with a temporary structure and the remainder demolished. The current contract for the refurbishment of Nos 3-5 Bath Street and the Royal Talbot Hotel commenced in February 1992. No drawings for the Royal Talbot Hotel exist, so extensive use has been made of some illustrations of the building to ascertain the detail of the missing upper storeys in order to recreate them faithfully. A particularly difficult area of the refurbishment has been trying to find bricks to match the existing ones and economics dictated a search for an alternative to Welsh slate for the roof. Few internaI features survived the aftermath of the bombing, but parts of the original Victorian Gothic staircase have been incorporated, together with other joinery and stone fittings. The whole complex has been refurbished to form offices.