St David's Hotel, Harlech
The St. David's Hotel is based on proposals drawn-up in January 1907 by George Henry Walton, a Glasgow School architect and contemporary of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
[2] The Hotel reflects skilled craftsmanship, in the handling of materials and detail, that echoes Walton's earlier design for Wern Fawr (now Coleg Harlech).
[4] The Hotel was built for a syndicate, in which George Walton was involved, and catered primarily for golfers visiting the adjacent Royal St David's Golf Club.
[5] The Hotel had 60 bedrooms and served traditional home-cooked food, facilities included an early twentieth-century lift (elevator), a snooker table, an outdoor pool, and a solarium.
On 17 December 2008, the DCW issued a Design Review Report which concluded, inter alia, that the replacement hotel complex would be an "overdevelopment of the site".
In December 2015 the SNPA filed an enforcement notice under section 215 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (TCPA) requiring the owners, Aitchinson Associates Limited (AAL) of Gibraltar, to demolish the Hotel, which had remained closed since 2008 and had subsequently fallen into disrepair.
The SNPA also commented that it had been inundated with complaints from local residents and visitors to Harlech about the poor condition of the Hotel building, which lies in an elevated position adjacent to the A496 road.
[9] [10] On 17 October 2018, the SNPA's Planning and Access Committee considered exploring the possibility of initiating formal ‘direct action’ under Section 219 of the TCPA, in order to attempt to secure the demolition of the Hotel, due to the untidy condition of the building.
