Located directly opposite
Winchester Cathedral, on what was once a
burial ground in the north east corner of the cathedral grounds, the hotel occupies a prominent site in the centre of the city. It is constructed primarily from
red brick with
Portland stone dressings.
Nikolaus Pevsner described the hotel as a "
triumph of Modernism" and it is notable for its architectural incongruity with the mixture of predominantly
medieval,
Georgian and
Victorian architecture that characterises Winchester's historic centre. The L-shaped three-storey building was specifically designed to ensure that all of the public rooms have views across to the cathedral, which are correspondingly arranged along the south side of the main wing. A second square wing to the east, built around a central
courtyard, is where the majority of the bedrooms are located. It has an open ground floor that is raised on circular pillars. In the foyer is a screen of twelve backlit
stained-glass panels, each depicting an individually designed foliate
Green Man head. These were specifically commissioned for the new hotel from
John Piper, who created designs that were interpreted in glass by his regular collaborator
Patrick Reyntiens. Now arranged in three rows of four, they were first installed in 1964 in a different location in the building and in a layout that included lost fibre-glass panels made by David Gillespie. ==References==