Restored art deco Royal Hotel Dungog listed with $2.1m–$2.3m guide
By the time Howard Glenn bought the Royal Hotel in November 2019, the once-grand art deco-style country pub had become a troubling neighbour.
Glenn had lived next door for years, watching as the hotel’s splendour faded. It eventually closed, its gaming machine entitlements were sold, and the empty building began attracting squatters.
“It was a good neighbour when I moved here 20 years ago,” Glenn says. “But over the years it ran down and down and down.”
That decline was particularly painful because, underneath the neglect, Glenn could see an exceptional building.
From neglected neighbour to art deco pub palace
The Royal has occupied its Dowling Street site in Dungog since 1850, originally opening as the Durham Hotel. Its present building dates from 1939, when brewer Tooth & Co replaced an earlier pub with a streamlined art deco hotel inspired by the forms of ocean liners.
“Tooth & Co built these sorts of pub palaces around the countryside,” Glenn explains. “The Royal Hotel Dungog is one of the best examples. It’s one of the high points of 1930s Australian architecture.”
Glenn had stayed in plenty of hotels but had never run one. Nevertheless, when a proposed sale of the derelict Royal fell through, the local real estate agent approached him.
“We said we would give it a go. It couldn’t be any worse than it was,” he says.
The scale of the task became apparent almost immediately. One uninvited resident had made a home in the laundry, while another required assistance from police to leave. Glenn allowed a father and son who were staying in the building to remain until the son had finished his HSC.
The physical condition of the hotel was equally confronting. Its original 1930s tiles had been covered in black paint and graffiti. Later fibro additions concealed the building’s generous proportions, while none of the contents of its 24 rooms could be salvaged.
“You could see the grand bones and all the beautiful 1930s tiles, but it was all covered up in the ’80s. It’s a wonder why they would want to cover up such beautiful design.”
A heritage-led pandemic restoration
Then came COVID-19 and for Glenn, the first year of the pandemic provided an unexpected opportunity. With little else happening, work began on the hotel’s structural problems, plumbing and decades of accumulated alterations.
Specialists were brought from Sydney, including a heritage architect and building manager. Layers of paint were stripped away, unsympathetic additions removed and the original timber floors polished.
The floorboards proved to be among the building’s hidden treasures.
“The timber polishers looked at them and said, ‘This is really special stuff’,” Glenn says. “Dungog was a timber town, so you would expect beautiful floorboards. We brought it all back to polished timber.”
Rather than remake the Royal as a conventional modern hotel, Glenn sought to recover the atmosphere of a grand country establishment.
The shared bathrooms serving many of the guestrooms were restored instead of being divided into small en suites. Glenn said they offer the scale and detail of an English country house rather than the utilitarian facilities many guests expect.
“When people think of shared bathrooms, they think of caravan parks, but when they made shared bathrooms back in the day, they were grand. There is no step back in dignity.”
The result is a hotel that balances its history with the practical requirements of a contemporary hospitality business.
Its accommodation includes 13 renovated hotel rooms, ranging from singles and twins to queen rooms opening onto the street-front verandah. There is also a three-bedroom apartment, the self-contained Royal Suite and a studio apartment, with another seven rooms offering conversion potential.
Downstairs are four dining environments, two restored bars and an expanded commercial kitchen. The largest spaces can accommodate 80 dinner guests or 110 people for an event, while the hotel also has licensed footpath dining for 40.
Vibrant community hub hits market for $2.1m-$2.3m
Set on 2347 square metres, with a building area of approximately 786 square metres, the property is being offered for sale through expressions of interest with a price guide of $2.1 million to $2.3 million. Its NSW hotel liquor licence is transferable, and the venue operates without poker machines.
Under Glenn’s ownership, the Royal Hotel has re-established itself as both a tourism destination and a town meeting place.
Touring performers, including Ben Lee and Tim Freedman, have appeared at the hotel, while local musicians, trivia nights, Sunday roasts and community functions fill its calendar. It accommodates Barrington Tops visitors, cyclists, motorcyclists and groups who hire the entire hotel for a country weekend.
“There is a big tourist trade, but there are regulars as well. We might have 60 people along for trivia. We do the wakes and the baby showers, all those important community occasions. It has become a real gathering place,” explains Glenn.
Glenn believes Dungog’s relative seclusion has helped preserve the town’s character. It is connected by rail and is about an hour from Newcastle and two and a half hours from Sydney, but it is not on the main road to somewhere else.
“You have to actually be coming here,” he says. “It’s off the beaten track, and it’s a town that hasn’t really changed in scale for 100 years.”
Glenn is ready to relinquish the day-to-day demands of running a seven-day hospitality and accommodation business as he goes into retirement.
“The real fun was in the recreation and recovery of a gorgeous community asset,” he says. “Now we want someone with the same passion for quality tourism to take it to the next level.
“It’s got to be someone with passion and resources. We have got it to the stage where we like it, but we would love to hand it on to someone else.”
Glenn will not be going far as he intends to remain in the house next door, returning to the role that started the entire adventure.
“I’m never going to move from where I am; I’ll just become a customer,” he says.
