Some dodgy hotel

 

Todays hotel is a little different to my usual blogs, because it's a Covid Closure. That is, it shut for lockdown and then never reopened. It turns out that when Boris Johnson went on TV and told us that we were only allowed one form of exercise a day, some people thought that a little arson counted. I've never done it so I don't know for sure, but I assume the next thing one does after setting a building on fire is run like fuck, so I can see their point.

But was the arson necessarily an act of mindless vandalism? The hotel has a certain reputation, and the more one looks into it, the more it comes as no surprise that someone decided to do their best to make sure that it never reopened. It doesn't always make for comfortable reading. Take that as a content warning.

 

A nice big crest on the wall reads "Labor et Industria" which is the final indication of the buildings history before it was a hotel. Before it was tarnished forever by scandal, this was the house of a prominent tile manufacturer named George. Unfortunately I cant find anything about the residence prior to George living here, but it predates his birth in 1867 by about 60ish years. Perhaps it was the family home. 

 

George dabbled in tile manufacturing prior to the first world war, but once that was out of the way he plunged himself wholeheartedly into it, instigating the mass production of tiles throughout the 1920s to counter the heavy imports from France and Belgium. He ended up owning several companies, and became a partner in others. Finally in 1933 he smushed it all together into one mega tile extravaganza that ended up outliving him. 

 

George was super rich, but he was nice with it, and put loads of money into his local community, including funding the X-Ray wing of his local hospital. He is said to have died in this building in 1937, days before his wing of the hospital was due to open. He left £339311 to his wife and kids, which according to an inflation calculator is just over seventeen million by todays standards. 

Thanks to the magic power of Google, I've managed to hunt down an old photo of what the house used to look like.

 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

So also living in this awesome house was Georges wife, and his children. He had at least two. The son, Ken, was born in 1917 and did not share his fathers passion for rooftiles, but instead took after his mother. His mother was into motor sports, and had been taught to drive by the chauffer of Sir Henry Segrave, a famous bloke in the world of motorsports at the time and the first person to travel over 200mph in a land vehicle. It was from his mother that Ken developed his passion for motorsports and went on to enter the British Grand Prix in the 1950s. He's said to have two nephews who have also raced internationally, but they have a different surname, which would indicate that Ken had a sister. I don't know her first name, but it seems she married Frank Skailes the London-based Cheesemaker, whose family-run business is still being run by his grandchildren to this day.

Ken also had a daughter, Ann, who died in 1980. She was married to Paddy McNally, who was the founder of Allsport Management, a company that provided advertising at formula 1 events. So she's still connected to the family passion of racing, but not nearly in quite as exciting capacity. 

While I don't know for sure that Ken lived in this house following his fathers death, it was sold in the 1950s around the same time he retired from Formula 1 racing and buggered off to Monaco, so it does add up.

Following its sale, the house became a hotel, and then in 1968 someone unceremoniously tacked this big architectual tumour onto the front.

 

It's not the prettiest of extensions, is it?

 

 

But the hotel did retain this really awesome tower, which must have been pretty cool to sit in back when it was a place of residence.  

As a hotel, it initially had a great reputation, and many people who stayed here in the latter half of the 20th Century remember it fondly. As well as  being a place to stay, it also hosted live music and other performances, including a guy called Mr Pastry, who was sort of 1950s Mr Bean portrayed by a guy called Richard Hearne. Mr Pastry was a bumbling old man who entertained children with slapstick humour. He was possibly one of the pioneers of Televised entertainment. He was also very nearly the star of Doctor Who, but he wanted to play the Doctor as Mr Pastry, so they gave the job to Tom Baker instead.

 On the roof it's possible to see this, indicative of quite a pretty function room. But enough of the rooftop! It's time to slip inside!

 

 

 

The entry lobby is in the big 1960s extension, and even with all the vandalism and carnage, it's easy to see that it would have once been quite a nice place. It's definitely prettier on the inside.

 

 

 And obviously, because it's a hotel, interior shots do exist on various booking websites, so it's possible to see what this area looked like back when it was clean.

 

(Picture not mine)

 

I thought for a moment thaty there were two stairways in the older picture, but no, that's just a reflection in the super-shiny reception desk. 

 

So here's the reception area, where towards the end of the hotels life, many a receptionist was ranted at by unhappy guests looking for a refund. 

 

The downfall of the hotel seems to have start around 2015/2016. Up until that point it had been part of a chain, but they'd let it go and the hotel continued chugging along anyway, on a gradual decline under new management.

 

Things got pretty dodgy. The hotel continued advertising itself as part of the chain for years after it was let go, keeping the old signs up and everything. The images it used online were also from the hotels time as a chain, which might not seem like a big deal, but we'll come back to that. 

Guests reported that the staff were mostly teenagers, many them were rude, many of which were smoking and drinking on the premises during work hours, inviting their friends over, drinking in the hotels bar all night, and basically just being teenagers. They'd check the guests in and take their money, but the same kids working reception would also work the bar, without measuring the drinks, and would also serve the food, which was said to be less than adequate. And as for the manager, he seemed to be non-existent. Any requests to speak to him were often deflected, usually by giving phony telephone numbers and e-mail addresses, and also fake names. Some guests were told "he has a life too!" And that's fine. I absolutely recommend having a healthy work/life balance. But when you're a hotel manager, it's probably not wise to leave a hotel in the hands of a group of sixteen year olds.

 

Following its closure, all of the staff documentation was left behind, which is pretty bad. But then, they probably thought they'd be reopening.

 

I have another shot of this angle (ish) from before the hotels decline too.

(Photo not mine)

 

 

The piano is quite nice. Allegedly guests were forbidden to touch it. Somehow it's survived all the destruction and carnage around it.

 

 

By far one of the more suspcious aspects of the hotel from 2016 onwards was the fact that all the key-card locks on the rooms were broken. Guests often claimed that their bedrooms had clearly been broken into. Many of the doors were damaged with splinters sticking out, and the locks had been replaced by simplistic yale locks, of which one key fit all. The security implications of having all the locks in the hotel compatible with every key are pretty obvious, but throw in the fact that these are teenagers left unattended to run a hotel with minimal training, and you can be damn sure the organisational aspect of the booking process was somewhat lacking in finese. Guests would find themselves booked into rooms that already had occupants, and that often led to them seeing far more than they wanted, or getting intruded on late at night. And it almost certainly led to the revelation that the hotel was a hotbed of prostitution because people would walk in on sex workers with their clients. 

I'm just going to say what I think. It sounds like a gang had taken over a closed hotel, and were masquerading it as an open hotel in order to make some dosh. Only things like the paperwork and the fact that they did have a bar license give any indication that there was some professional aspect.

There was an adult manager, and when he did make an appearance he was often described as a foul mouthed yob. The odds are he was recruiting young because inexperienced staff in their first jobs ask less questions and can be easily shaped into a toxic workplace culture.

 

This isn't to say that all of the staff were shite. A lot of guests actually said that some of the teenagers serving them were nice and friendly, but untrained and unprepared for the responsibilities of running a hotel, with absolutely no professional managerial input. To these teenagers, many thought they were getting their first real job and genuinely put in effort. There are good reviews from those who happened to get the right staff.

 

Unfortunately other employees realised that they were basically being left unspervised with access to alcohol as long as they were prepared to take money from the occasional guest, and they took full advanrage of that. Guests would report the frequent parties, some of which involved inviting the employees friends over in huge numbers, and getting absolutely bladdered. A lot of the guests found this intimidating, to have the hotel suddenly overrun by yobs. There were fights, and there were cases where teenagers would get aggressive at the guests. The police were called to the hotel countless times, with the most notorious case being in New Years Eve of 2016 when they came to stop a horde of teenagers breaking into the hotel rooms.

 

It was all a bit fucked.

 

Understandably, such a chaotic environment cannot exist without the authorities noticing, and in 2017 there was a HUGE investigation into the hotel. A dossier spanning ten months included the presence of huge amounts of cocaine, underage drinking, frequent drunk teenage fighting, no PAT testing on appliances, a filthy kitchen, no fire regulations, lots of prostitution, unlicensed games machines, no working CCTV, no measuring drinks, defective fire alarms, blocked fire exits, and then of course, the topic that the hotel is most notorious for, child sex exploitation.

This allegedly came to light entirely accidentally at first. From what I've read, it seems that the police were at the hotel investigating some fights that had broken out when they realised that one of the guests was a vulnerable girl who had gone missing from a childrens home. She'd been checked into the hotel with a man in his thirties. Following thaty, there were three more cases of underage girls being checked in with much older men.

And while people are content to say that's all there was, I'm not convinced. Four unrelated sexual predators don't just coincidentally decide to check in to the same hotel at separate times. Clearly they knew this was the place they could get away with it, which means there was either a bit of an agreement with the hotels manager, or the hotel just had a reputation for looking the other way. Either way, I don't think for a moment that four is the limit. The sad truth of child sex exploitation that nobody likes to think about is that it's an iceberg. We only know about the ones who get caught. And for these four to get caught, they must have been over-confident that they wouldn't get caught, and to reach that level, you have to get away with it a whole bunch of times. Possibly related, the ten-month dossier did include pouring vodka into the drinks of sixteen-year-old girls when they weren't paying attention. Sometimes this included the teenage staff, but let's face it, they were being exploited too.

Suddenly the arson makes sense!

Making our way up the hallway from the front lobby, we come to the spot directly next to where the fire happened. The unfortunate thing about the fire is it happened right at the point where the hotels modern extension connects to the original Victorian building, which means the older building took most of the damage. In particular, the little tower is directly above where the fire took place.

 

I was able to match this part of the hallway with an older photo. It gives this shot a suitably apocalyptic vibe.

 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

 

Turning right here will take us to the function rooms. Turning left takes us to the arson epicenter. 

 

 

 So predictably as of the investigation in 2017 the hotel was banned from serving alcohol and food, although early 2017 reviews do describe having cereal served for breakfast. The manager was removed, and a new one took his place. Judging by the media reports at the time, she was super positive and eager to reverse the hotels decline and reputation as a pedo palace.

 Apparently the staff were now going to get relevant training in hotel shit, as well as training in spotting child exploitation. The new rule was to check the ID of everyone who came into the hotel, and also to forbid anyone under 18 from checking in. Naturally the hotel fucked that up too, and there were cases of entire families being denied accomodation due to trying to take their kids on holiday with them. 

But at least they hotel is trying, right?

 

 

Many guests were referred to the vending machine when they checked in only to find that the hotel wasn't serving food anymore.

 

 

One problem with the hotel going forward was their secrecy regarding what had happened. Their half-assed attempts at covering up their reputation only served to make people suspect that something dodgy was going on. They told guests that they couldn't serve alcohol or food because the hotel was being renovated, despite the fact that even a blind person could see that no renovation was underway. The other problem was that they were still advertising it as having a bar, restaurant and function area, only breaking the truth to guests once they checked in. I'm not sure what happened with the bar. The restrictions were temporasry but even after the ban was lifted, guests still reported that the bar was closed with the same renovation excuse being thrown around for years.

Then there's the other main problem that the hotel had to face, and that's simply that there's more to running a hotel than checking customers in. There's also the upkeep side of things. The upkeep and maintenance had always been slacking. Guests had been complaining about dirty rooms for ages. However all of the underage sexcapades overshadowed it all. A few months of improper maintenance can be swept under the rug. A few years, not so much.

So among the things guests raised their eyebrows at were bedrooms that hadn't been tidied, bed sheets that hadn't been changed,  kettles that didn't match their bases, no toilet paper, no soap, poo stains on towels, bags of rubbish still present in the room, and throughout it all the unsupervised staff continued to play their music loud and smoke weed when they should be working. So the new boss basically failed to accomplish anything she set out to achieve.

 

 

The problem with the upkeep was that the hotel was still using photos from its time as a chain. I said we'd come back to that. The hotel was advertising itself as it used to be under decent management, not as it currently was. The guests were starting to feel a bit catfished. 

Rooms weren't being cleaned after they'd been used, so guests were already reporting things like finding dirty thongs in their beds, used condoms in the toilet, stained bedsheets, dirty carpets, graffiti in the rooms and damaged headboards. One guest said in a review that they had to fill the bath with the kettle over and over because there was no hot water. The staff member manning the reception desk did try to help, but rather than do anything to fix the hot water issue, he just brought them more kettles to speed up the process.

But as of 2019 the building itself was falling into neglect. Some guests described it as derelict even before it closed. There were mouldy bathrooms, damp in the corners, fungus on the window, rooms that stank of smoke, bed bugs, cobwebs, poo left over from previous guests. That sort of thing. 

On the plus side, room prices were dropping. The reviews from 2019 claim that they only paid £30 for a night, which is a lot less than previous years, although it was never overly expensive. Evidently the manager realised that she couldn't really charge £50 or more unless she was willing to hire a cleaner. 

Seriously, at this point their decline would have been reversed if they'd just hire a cleaner.

 

 

There were several function rooms, and each one had its own name. Presumably this was to entertain multiple events while still hosting breakfast and drinks for the regular guests. Presumably all of this just became empty and unused once the bar closed and the so-called renovations were underway.

 

The fallen chandelier sits in what I *think* was The Whitmore Room, and beyond that in the shadows is the Acton Room. They're actually the same room, but the plans I've seen show them as separated, so presumably at some point a wall was taken down to make the room bigger.

Here's the bar area, and it's pretty depressing purely because it's obvious that once long ago, before it was used primarily to get underage girls drunk, this would have been a pretty cool place to drink. It looks really nice!

 But this bar was completely neglected towards the end of the hotels life. Or at least, the guests weren't going to get much here. The staff were still reported to be having parties, albeit smaller scale than the ones that had previously drawn police attention. Some staff members did offer drugs to the clients if they complained about the smell. It also seems that one of the night porters was a drug dealer. Guests would report people coming in taxis whenever he was working, nipping in to see him for a few minutes before riding off in the taxis again, so he definitely had some sort of side hustle going on. But let's be honest, selling drugs is several steps up from  pimping out kids, so the hotel is kinda improving.  It's just a shame the guests needed a hazmat suit just to stay in any of the rooms. The hotel was losing loads of money purely because people were demanding refunds as soon as they saw where they were expected to be staying. They'd go to other nearby hotels and travelodges, and the staff working there would ask if this sudden late booking was because they'd had a horrendous experience here. The place was famous for all the wrong reasons.

Somehow it only took a virus from China to close the hotel, but even then it seems pretty apparent that the manager fully expected to reopen once lockdown was over. But then the place was hit by antisocial behaviour. Four people were caught burgling the place. They fled the scene but three of them were caught, a 42 year old woman, a 31 year old man and a 17 year old girl. 

What, was it a family outing? Bit of an age range there. But they apparently weren't the first or the last. The hotel became a bit of a yob magnet even whgen it was closed.

 

It's sad to see this painting rotting away here. 

 

Behind the bar, things are equally as trashed. The alcohol is long gone.

Moving on, we have "The Sutherland Suite" which used to be much smaller, according to floor plans, but was then combined with the "Beech Room" to make this big function area. Above the chandelier is the dome that we saw on the rooftop, but it's been blocked off in favour of a blank white ceiling and an extravagant chandelier. That's a bit of a shame.

 

 

The room does have a stage area though. No doubt back in the hotels glory days, this was where bands performed.

 

 

I know it's got a pretty dark past that overshadows much of the hotels history, but I also think it's important to remember that the scandals only actually represent the latter few years. The hotel has decades before that, and these rooms were always here. So sex scandals aside, thousands of people spanning numerous generations have fond memories of this room. People performed here. People danced here. People met their friends and future loved ones here. Back then, they fell in love with consenting adults. It was great. 

 

I always think it's important to try to see a place from the perspective of the people it mattered to. This wasn't just some teenage-run cesspit. It was actually a very nice place once, with many a pleasant night. 

 

 

Seeing this reference always puts a smile on my face. I've seen it before in other abandoned places. It happens to be the best conversational topic to lure me into attempting a Scottish accent. 

 

So in April 2021 the hotel was set on fire. It shouldn't really surprose anyone though. To return to what I said at the start of the blog, it comes as no surprise that someone wanted to make sure this place never reopened. The place was a notorious pedo den, the local rags talking freely about the sex scandals, and it might come as a surprise to some of you, but people don't like living next to all that shit. Of course someone decided to burn it down. It doesn't stop it from happening, but it is easier to sleep at night knowng that it's not happening on your street anymore.

 

This room was called the Oaks room, and it's pretty well lit. Unlike the other function rooms, it has windows! It also seems to be where the majority of tables anmd chairs are, as well as a serving hatch, so I'm guessing this was the dining area.

 

 

And look, edgy people have tried to summon Satan!
Why would Satan want to be summoned to a pedo palace? The Satanic bible actually claims thay children are sacred, because their minds are untarnished by all the bullshit of adulthood, and their innocence represents true freedom from indoctrination. If you want sexual depravitity, it's the Christian bible you want, which tells rape victims to marry their attackers. Summon Jesus instead.

 

Then we have the Cypruss Room, which seems to be another nice little lounge.

But then at the other side of the burned section, and completely missing on the floor plan that I saw, we have this large wrecked bit.

 

Quite disturbingly this room had photocopies of the IDs of past guests. This actually correlates with a lot of bad reviews of this place, where people were baffled by the hotels unique and bizarre policy of insisting on photocopying the IDs of all their guests. 

 

 

The fact is, the hotel staff were put under a lot of pressure to make sure that no creepy men checked in with underage girls again, and they had to prove this to the police too, because they were paying attention, and the hotel staff were eager to prove that they were doing the best to prevent their earlier problems. 

 

As with the bar, the hotel lied about why they were doing this. They didn't admit to needing to check everyone due to the police clamping down on a child exploitation ring, so when they asked to photocopy peoples ID, people just got even more suspicious.

This is actually the hotel attempting to solve one of their problems and it kinda blew up in their face.

It is a bit shitty that they didn't destroy this information though. These are peoples names and addresses here, from as recent as 2018.

 

There are still guest admission forms here too, all of which contain sensitive information. Interestingly some of them don't even take down the full name of the guests, which doesn't really inspire confidence in their screening process if they are trying to improve their security. But I guess it's too late for constructive criticism now.

 

In the kitchen, all the plates are all over the floor, many of them still stained with the last meal that was eaten off them. Of course, given the neglect that the hotel suffered even when it was open, I highly doubt anyone was commited to washing the dishes. These could have looked like this for a long time before the hotel closed.

 

 

This looks like it's written in shit. It probably isn't but nothing surprises me at this point. Anyway, here's the number to call if you want to be bummed silly for spare chnge.

 

 

There's a small staff area, presumably where they dossed when there wasn't a party to be had, or when dossing at the bar got boring. 

 

 

Theres some photos here, but they're pretty terrible.  

And next up we have the best part of any abandoned building, the toilets. 

 

 

Still in better condition than the toilets in some active pubs and clubs.

 

There's a shower too, with a bin for some reason. 

The hotel also has a cellar which I found delightfully huge and cavernous, stretching under the entirety of the original Victorian building.

 

There's walls of bottle tacks. I'm sort of imagining that the cellar was like this back when it was a provate residence. It probably wasn't, but that would be awesome. Imagine having a wine cellar this big under your house

 

 

The graffiti on the table allocates specific bottles to specific bars. 

 

 

Given all the stuff this hotel is notorious for, this really seems like a weird thing to clamp down on. I guess the booze was more important than the guests wellbeing.

 

 

There's a huge monstrous cobweb draped from the corner of the room all the way down to the barrel on the floor. What a tenacious creature this spider was, definitely eager to catch every flying insect in the whole damn cellar. The barrel was actually closer to the door, but I had to (gently) lift it and move it out a bit just so that I could get past without destroying the spiders beautiful house. 

 

 

There's evidence of vermin. The cute kind, not the kind that take vulnerable underage girls to hotels. 

 

 

There's loads of old framed pictures down here too. I guess when the chain disowned the hotel and the new weird owners took over, they didn't like most of the wall art. 

 

 

There's a nifty little lift for sending stock up to the bar area. 

 

 

But this is sad. Down here in the cellar is this old display board that shows loads of vintage photos of the hotel, back when it was a chain, and an establishment that people actually enjoyed staying at.

It's like the new owners moved it down here to draw a firm line under the good old days.

 

 

Here are some people relaxing in thecocktail lounge, which back in the day was called The Lymes. 

 

 

This picture is quite sad. This is The Sutherland Suite back when its awesome ceiling hadn't been replaced with a wacky chandelier. 

 

 

This is in the Cretan Garden Restaurant. I don't know which part of the hotel this is. The carpet doesn't match the flooring in my pics. Of course, it doesn't help that I can't put a date on the photograph. For all I know, this could have been taken in the 1980s.

 

Moving back upstairs, above the main hallway and the fire damaged bit I found the staff offices.

 

Over the years I've ignored so many signs like this. Why stop now?

 

 

Up here is the managers office, wih sort of implies that he was here a lot more than the teenage staff indicated when they were handling complaints. 

 

Over on the wall is a shelf of folders, containing all of the employees time sheets, some dated 2015.

 

Max apparently doesn't have a surname. 

 

There's a lso a lot of childrens colouring stuff up here, which is probably here for innocent enough reasons, perhaps originally brought in to entertain the children of guests. But given the history and the reputation this place has, it does take my imahgination down a more morbid road.

 

 

Just to make things a little odd, there's a photocopier in the bathroom. 

 

There are actually bathroom sinks in quite a few of the rooms up here, none of which were available to guests in the buildings hotel capacity. They all look pretty old too, which makes me wonder if these were actually here back when the building was still a house. I have seen large abandoned houses that have sinks in the bedroom before. It does happen, and the sinks were in a similar style too. 

I think out of the entire building, this may be the most unchanged. 

But now, onto the hotel rooms themselves.

 

Stepping back into the modern extension, all that vintage goodness slips away, leaving just this characterless blandity (That's totally a word, shut up). 

 

 

There are little seating areas under the stairs that I kinda like. 

 

 

There's a big sign on the hallway door asking that guests are quiet out of respect for other people staying here, which is hilariously ironic seeing as the hotel staff were inviting their friends over, getting drunk, starting fights, and frequently running through the hotel banging on the doors and shouting.

 

There's a shoe here. There's always a shoe.

 

Now, I'm obviously not going to photograph every bedroom. There's fifty of them and they got a bit samey. It sure is weird though to see rooms like this where the bed is still mostly tidyish amongst the chaos of the rest of the hotel. 

 

The scratches on the headboards are some of the things guests would complain about, along with the mess. In fact given how people described the rooms as unkempt, this is probably exactly what the guests would see when they checked in.

 

 

There's a Christian bible here, which is much more fitting for a hotel of sexual depravity. 

 

On the subject of sex though, it's a little bit weird to be here, knowing what has taken place in these rooms. Obviously it's impossible to know which specific room it happened in, and I've also completely forgotten whih rooms are which in my photographs, but the ambiguity just makes me a little more weirded out. 

Let's be blunt. Any one of these beds could be the ones that children were raped on. It's fucked up.

 

It sure is weird to see so much of it left untouched too. Some of the rooms are smashed up. Others are immaculate time capsules of the hotel pre-closure. 

Some of the smashed bits could also be time capsules of the hotel pre-closure. 

 

This looks like it could be reopened tomorrow, and yet downstairs looks like a bomb site. It doesn't seem like the same building at all.

The bible is propped up agsinst the wall. I think it might actually be posed for a photo by previous urbexers.

 

 

Not sure if this was left here by a guest, the hotel staff, or people who have come here since its closed. Either one would not surprise me. 

 

Still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.

Still in better condition than the bedrooms of some urbexers.

 

So this larger room is apparently the bridal suite, which boggles the mind somewhat. Given the hotels reputation for being filthy, I can't imagine the bridal suite was used by many brides towards the end of the hotels life. But the fact that there even was a bridal suite does make me sad about the way the hotel turned out. There were a lot of happy memories here once.

 

As of 2019 the bridal suite was apparently the only room with a lock on it that couldn't be opened by the same key as every other room, so it was quickly scooped up by guests who made complaints and were offered a different room to stay in.

 

In one of the hotel rooms I came across another urban explorer. I'm not sure which one this is though. Many of the pin-swapping ones all look the same to me. 

Now onto the most fire damaged part of the hotel.

 

Here things are bit more death-trappy. Any moment now the floor could collapse and I could find myself impaled on some pointy debris. Don't worry,  I'm sure someone will eventually notice that I'm missing. Probably my landlord when he doesn't get paid... which, depending on how close we are to payday, could be several months until my rent direct debit runs dry. Shit. At least the pigeons will have something to peck at. 

 

 

And here we have the pointy tower part of the hotel. A century ago this was likely the bedroom of George the tile manufacturer, a rich dude who poured loads of money into improving his community. He was a lucky bloke to wake up every day and have a nifty tower to look out at the world from. 

 

From the tower it's possible to squeeze out through the window and crawl up the tiles back onto the roof.

 

Just look at this shittery. I had hoped to get onto the flat roof of the modern extension, but I trust this wreckage to support my weight about as much as I trust Kate McCann to babysit. It's such a shame that the fire happened here in the older version of the hotel instead of in the ugly modern extension. Perhaps if it had, the older part of the building could be preserved.

 

 

There's a nice little view down into one of the bathrooms. 

 

 

Alas, with the fire damage so severe, the hotels prospects of reopening are non-existent. It's due to be demolished to make way for a load of new homes. And to be honest, with the hotels reputation that's probably for the best. Even if the hotel was salvageable, if it reopened it would be forever tainted by its reputation. It could change managers and staff a hundred times but people will always know that this is the place where little girls got diddled. That shit sticks. Perhaps it's best just to wipe it off the face of the Earth and start again.

Its just a shame really, given that this was once the prosperous home of a man who did a lot for his community. It's got ties with tile manufacture, formula 1 racing, and the cheese industry, which is all pretty damn random, but it's still history and that's cool. It's a shame it turned out the way it did. 

But at least it had many happy decades as a pretty good hotel before it all went to shit.

 

 
That's all I've got. To conclude, last time I came here I had to get onto the roof in order to get in. Unless that's changed then it's probably not good for the less-nimble urbexer. And with the fire damage on top of that, it is a bit of a death trap. It's definitely more ideal for the urbexer with blossoming confidence rather than a complete newbie. It also still attracts the junkies and yobs, so don't go alone to this one, just in case things go foul.

 In my next blog I'm looking at a pretty sexy mansion with a sad history, and then I'm looking at a pretty sexy railway tunnel with a curious history. I'm looking forward to both.

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