The Midland Hotel is a Streamline Moderne building in Morecambe,

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancash ...

, England. It was built by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), in 1933, to the designs of architect Oliver Hill, with sculpture by

Eric Gill Arthur Eric Rowton Gill, (22 February 1882 – 17 November 1940) was an English sculptor, letter cutter, typeface designer, and printmaker. Although the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' describes Gill as ″the greatest artist-cra ...

, and murals by

Eric Ravilious Eric William Ravilious (22 July 1903 – 2 September 1942) was a British painter, designer, book illustrator and wood-engraver. He grew up in Sussex, and is particularly known for his watercolours of the South Downs and other English landsc ...

(subsequently destroyed).Carter, Oliver (1990). ''An illustrated history of British Railway Hotels: 1838-1983''. St Michael's: Silver Link Publishing. Simmons, Jack and Biddle, Gordon (1997). ''The Oxford Companion to British Railway History: From 1603 to the 1990s''. Oxford:

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

. . It is a Grade II*

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

. The hotel has been restored by

Urban Splash Urban Splash was founded in 1993 by Chairman Tom Bloxham MBE and Creative Director Jonathan Falkingham MBE; the company has spent more than two decades working with architects and designers to restore old buildings and create new, sustainable c ...

with architects Union North, Northwest Regional Development Agency and Lancaster City Council.

Construction

The Midland Hotel was built to replace two earlier hotels: the North Western Hotel built in 1848 by the

"little" North Western Railway The North Western Railway (NWR) was an early British railway company in the north-west of England. It was commonly known as the "Little" North Western Railway, to distinguish it from the larger London and North Western Railway (LNWR). The NWR w ...

, which had been renamed the ''Midland Hotel'' in 1871 when the

Midland Railway The Midland Railway (MR) was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1844. The Midland was one of the largest railway companies in Britain in the early 20th century, and the largest employer in Derby, where it had its headquarters. It ama ...

took over the North Western Railway; and another hotel at

Heysham Heysham ( ) is a coastal town in Lancashire, England, overlooking Morecambe Bay. It is a ferry port, with services to the Isle of Man and Ireland, and the site of two nuclear power stations. Demography Administratively, Heysham is part of th ...

, the ''Heysham Towers'', which was converted from a private house in 1896. The ''Heysham Towers'' served railway steamer traffic from Heysham Harbour to

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdom ...

; but it was not a success and was sold in 1919. In 1932, the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) bought land from Morecambe Corporation to build the 40-bedroom Midland Hotel replacing the old hotel. It opened in July 1933.

The design

Eric Gill seahorse-Midland Hotel Morecombe

The hotel is designed in the Streamline Moderne style of

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

. Oliver Hill designed a three-storey curving building, with a central circular tower containing the entrance and a spiral staircase, and a circular café at the north end. The front of the hotel is decorated with two Art Deco

seahorse A seahorse (also written ''sea-horse'' and ''sea horse'') is any of 46 species of small marine fish in the genus ''Hippocampus''. "Hippocampus" comes from the Ancient Greek (), itself from () meaning "horse" and () meaning "sea monster" or " ...

s, which can be viewed at close proximity from the hotel's rooftop terrace. The hotel stands on the seafront with the convex side facing the sea, and the concave side facing inland. Hill designed the hotel to complement the curve of the promenade, which allowed guests to view spectacular panoramas of the

North West The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...

coast. The former

Morecambe Promenade railway station Morecambe Promenade Station was a railway station in Morecambe, Lancashire, England. It was opened on 24 March 1907 by the Midland Railway and closed in February 1994. After twelve weeks break in passenger service for the revision of track wor ...

, served by the railway company whose showcase hotel this was, is nearby.

War time use and disposal

During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

the Midland Hotel, along with most of the large hotels and garages in the town, was requisitioned, either for the newly created RAF Station, RAF Morecambe or for the Civil Service. The hotel became the station's hospital, opening on 17 February 1940. The Senior Medical Officer was Wing Commander R.C.L. Fisher. The hotel was stripped of its valuable carpets and rugs and the Gill mural was covered. By June 1941 the station magazine, ''Morecambe Wings'' was reporting that the hospital had already treated 3700 patients, including 160 major operations and 400 minor ones. Also reported was the average attendance at the massage clinic of 33 people daily, but this was declining due to the end of the football season. Up to June 1941, over 1,000 airmen had been fitted with spectacles and over 100,000 had been inoculated or

vaccinated A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious or malignant disease. The safety and effectiveness of vaccines has been widely studied and verified.< ...

. The hospital was visited in February 1941 by Princess Mary, Princess Royal, accompanied by Air Vice-Marshal William Tyrrell. At the time the station commander was Group Captain E. Hillman-Gray. On nationalisation of the railways, ownership transferred to the

British Transport Commission The British Transport Commission (BTC) was created by Clement Attlee's post-war Labour government as a part of its nationalisation programme, to oversee railways, canals and road freight transport in Great Britain (Northern Ireland had the se ...

(BTC) on 1 January 1948 coming under the control of the BTC's Railway Executive; however on 1 July 1948, along with the other railway hotels, ownership was transferred to the BTC's Hotels Executive.Skelsey, Geoffrey (2006). "Famous Hotel-Keepers for over a century: British Railway Hotels under State Ownership, 1948-84". In: ''Back Track'', Volume 20, No. 7 (July 2006). Pp 390 - 399. . It was sold by the BTC in 1952.

21st century

Midland Hotel, Morecambe, in evening sunlight

Union North were employed as architects by

for the refurbishment and expansion of the hotel commencing in 2006. It opened its doors to the public in the summer of 2008. In April 2009 Urban Splash announced a partnership with English Lakes Hotels to manage the Midland Hotel from 8 April 2009. Further developments on the Central Promenade were completed by Urban Splash. The mural by Ravilious had only lasted two years, until 1935, as a result of the poorly-finished plaster on which it was painted. It was temporarily reinstated for the filming of the Poirot episode in 1989, and a modified version was painted by the artist Jonquil Cook in 2013.

Other history

The 1960 film '' The Entertainer'' was filmed in Morecambe, and features the hotel. The hotel was used in filming episodes of the TV series ''

Agatha Christie's Poirot ''Poirot'' (also known as ''Agatha Christie's Poirot'') is a British mystery drama television programme that aired on ITV from 8 January 1989 to 13 November 2013. David Suchet starred as the eponymous detective, Agatha Christie's fictional Her ...

'', starring David Suchet, in 1989, most notably in the episode 'Double Sin' where Poirot has brought Captain Hastings to stimulate "the little grey cells."

David Constantine David John Constantine (born 1944) is an English poet, author and translator. Background Born in Salford, Constantine read Modern Languages at Wadham College, Oxford, and was a Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford, until 2000, when he became ...

's short story "Tea at the Midland" is set at the hotel, and begins with a debate about the work of Eric Gill.

References

External links

English Lakes HotelsThe Midland Hotel WebsiteFriends of the Midland Hotel siteInformation on the original Architect - Oliver Hill
(archived October 2014)

October 2001, The Twentieth Century Society {{City of Lancaster buildings Hotel buildings completed in 1933 Art Deco architecture in England Art Deco hotels Buildings and structures in Morecambe Grade II* listed buildings in Lancashire Hotels established in 1933 Hotels in Lancashire Railway hotels in England Streamline Moderne architecture in the United Kingdom Oliver Hill (architect) buildings Structures formerly on the Heritage at Risk register