Black Castle Public House

It was built in 1745–55 as a folly in the form of a castle which incorporated office spaces and recreation rooms, but may have originally been a stable block and laundry for the lord of the manor. The building was probably designed by either William Halfpenny or James Bridges, for the prominent local factory owner William Reeve of Mount Pleasant, now the Arnos Manor Hotel, from which it is separated by a major road junction. Reeve smelted brass and copper, and the Black Castle was built from blocks created from the waste slag. In a letter written during a visit to Bristol in 1766, Horace Walpole said he was "struck with a large Gothic building, coal black, and striped with white", and that…

Designed in Gothic Revival style, the building is symmetrical in plan with crenellated circular towers at each corner that link two-storey blocks to form a square courtyard. The front and back blocks have larger crenellated entrance towers with moulded archways through. Above the front arch is a blank panel with ogee head and a two-centre arch on the second storey with perpendicular tracery. The ranges to each side of the entrance have two windows with Y-tracery below a white string course and white carved inset panels. At the top of the ranges are light-coloured battlements with sunken panels. Much of the freestone carving and dressings on the building supposedly came from the city's…