The Great Northern Hotel (London version)

So we just came home from a very nice trip to London, where we stayed at the Great Northern Hotel, which got me interested in its history and set me wandering/wondering on Google. However, I quickly discovered that simple searching for "great northern hotel" reveals that there were many buildings of this name, not just the one by St. Pancras and King's Cross in London! Thus, I am pairing this post with another one about OTHER "Great Northern Hotels."

The GNH website only gave a short bit about its history:

When the Great Northern Hotel first opened its doors in 1854, the passengers of London flocked. The hotel stood at the centre of London’s revolutionary new age of steam. Guests made the Great Northern Hotel a glamorous destination in central London and a stylish point of departure. 

Now magnificently renovated, the Great Northern Hotel guarantees the glorious glamour of its iconic past is central once again to the King’s Cross St Pancras basin. Lewis Cubitt, great architect of Victorian London, crafted this hotel to catch the eye: its slender curve of robust brick still a bold stamp on a busy landscape.

And I wanted to know more, not just about its renovation, but of how the original hotel appeared and how life was lived in it.  So the following satisfies some of my wander/wonder lust!


The King's Cross website adds a little bit more detail about early construction:

The Great Northern Hotel opened its doors in 1854 to the patrons of the Great Northern Railway Company. The hotel was designed by Lewis Cubitt and was one of the earliest purpose-built railway hotels in the country. 

Embracing a revolutionary new age of steam the hotel was a glamorous and stylish destination. Its fire-resistant construction was pioneering, with thick walls dividing every room and corridors constructed of brick arches. The curved south west front reflects the original alignment of Old St Pancras Road. 

The hotel had some 100 bedrooms and a hydraulic lift was added in the 1880s. Originally the hotel looked across a large expanse of garden to the station. Over the years the garden was annexed by station buildings and became “Station Place”.

The Great Northern Railway, which built and owned the hotel, became a constituent part of the London and Northeastern Railway as a result of Railways Act of 1922.  Then, effective January 1, 1948, under the nationalization program of the Transport Act of 1947, the Great Northern Hotel became the property of the Hotels Executive and later the British Transport Hotels, being sold off in 1983 to Compass Hotels. From March 15, 2001 article:

Compass Hotels will this week transfer its London headquarters to Harpenden from its flagship hotel, the Great Northern hotel at Kings Cross, which closed its doors to customers last month. 

The hotel had just completed a four-year refurbishment programme and the scaffolding had only been down for a month when it realised last December that long-planned developments at Kings Cross and St Pancras stations over the next six years would prove much too noisy for its guests to tolerate. 

General manager Mike Davies, who has been with the hotel for 13 years, said landlord London and Continental Railways had agreed to take back the lease and compensate Compass Hotels. 

The Grade II-listed hotel with 87 bedrooms and nine conference rooms was built in 1854 as London’s first purpose-built railway terminus hotel. 

Compass Hotels was set up by two former directors of British Transport Hotels in 1983 to buy from British Rail the leases for the Great Northern hotel and the Great Eastern hotel at Liverpool Street (now owned by Conran Holdings and Wyndham International)

In 1984, the Great Northern Hotel was accorded a Grade II listing. Nevertheless, as the King's Cross and St. Pancras redevelopment progressed there were plans to demolish the hotel:

Proposed Demolition of Great Northern Hotel Wed, Jun 10, 1992 – 21 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

According to a 2007 article in The Telegraph, photographer and artist Minnie Weisz gained access to the hotel (and other King's Cross buildings) and had an exhibit:

At the Great Northern Hotel, in London's King's Cross, which is awaiting redevelopment, Weisz tracked down the keys to every room, which had seemed to be lost. 

Although the doors to some rooms had been propped open, possession of the actual keys brought the feeling of closeness and ownership. As she puts it, she feels like the lady of the manor, only all her buildings are deserted.

Some of the images she took can be seen on the stylonnylon website.

The "Supporting Statement for a Listed Building Consent Application to demolish two small extensions, remove the railings and cover the lightwell along the south-west and north elevations of the Great Northern Hotel" from 2004 is available online.

The website of Archer Humphryes gives some text and background (and pictures) for "the titanic task of recovering and rebuilding the 1854 hotel, which had once been the epitome of railway-era glamour but had suffered from years of neglect by the time the architects were brought in." According to Ramboll, "the building fell into disrepair from 2001 when works took place to the adjacent Kings Cross underground station." In addition (along with other details of how the physical changes were made):

In 2009 the lower floors of the Great Northern Hotel were adapted to form an arcade out of 70% of the ground floor to improve access to the new station mainline station concourse behind the hotel. These works entailed lowering the ground floor (and the basement floor to maintain basement headroom) and the replacement of much of the ground floor load bearing masonry walls.

The Curve

Much is made of the curve--how the King's Cross roof has been made to fit into the curve of the Great Northern Hotel. I first found a discussion in Kings Cross Station Through Time (2012) by John Christopher: "Northbound trains from the Widened Lines [a stretch of track of the Metropolitan Railway with two extra lines] emerged on the western side of the main station via a steep curving tunnel which passed under the Great Northern Hotel and hence was known as the Hotel Curve or more derisively by the railwaymen as the 'Drain'."

But, then I came across a great article in The Londonist about "How King's Cross Station Was Designed 12,000 Years Ago." Basically, the author tracks that the Hotel's curve came from Curbitt's "[design] to snugly follow the curve of Pancras Road" and that Pancras Road was curved because it "was built to follow along the banks of the River Fleet" and the River Fleet's "current course was probably set by the tumultuous events of the last ice age, when retreating and melting glaciers 12,000 years ago altered the shape of the lands and rivers of north London." So glacier to glacier!

This 1962-63 season, Leicester had their prematch meal there when playing in London.

News & Events

Hotel Robbery Great Northern Hotel Sat, Apr 26, 1856 – 2 · The Lancaster Gazette (Lancaster, Lancashire, England) · Newspapers.com
Attempted suicide at Great Northern Hotel Sun, May 12, 1878 – 6 · Reynolds's Newspaper (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.comAntisubmarine Machine at Great Northern Hotel Fri, May 23, 1902 – 8 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.comMP Challenges Sex Discrimination at Great Northern Hotel Sun, Oct 29, 1950 – 5 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

Fiction

The Belton Estate (1865) by Anthony Trollope. Action in Chapter XXIV takes place at what he calls (and titles the chapter) "The Great Northern Railway Hotel." "Rooms had been taken there because they were to start by an early train on that line in the morning."

Don't Tell Alfred (1960) by Nancy Mitford: "I racked my brains to remember what I could about Northey, whom I had not seen since the early years of the war when Louisa and I were living at Alconleigh with our babies. ... Louisa once told me she was conceived in the Great Northern Hotel -- hence her curious name."

The Romantic Adventures of Mr. Darby and of Sarah His Wife  (2011) by Martin Armstrong: "Yet, in spite of her longing to be home, she felt herself unable, when she reached St. Pancras, to face the dreariness and weariness of a night journey, and determined to spend the night at the Great Northern Hotel and travel home next morning." ... "Sara was lunching in the train: the attendant had told them that luncheon would start as soon as the train left King's Cross: he himself had determined to lunch at the Great Northern Hotel, opposite the station entrance. But now the thought of entering the the hotel and coping with hall-porters and waiters and the general formality that lunch in the hotel would involve, was no longer attractive."