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| The Queen's Hotel |
The Queens Hotel was built on the site of the Sherborne or Imperial Spa. The spa was established in 1818 by the developers Thomas Henney and Samuel Harward, but due to fall in the water table the building was dismantled and reconstructed on a site further down the Promenade, now occupied by Royscott House.
The Queens Hotel was designed by two brothers, Robert William and Charles Jearrad, who modelled the classical capitals of its massive façade on those of the Temple of Jupiter in Rome, and it cost £47,000 to build it. Originally the hotel was called Liddell’s Hotel, as the first hotelier to lease the hotel for £2,100 a year was Richard Liddell, who ran other hotels in Cheltenham. Despite its luxury accommodation the hotel did not prosper and in 1852 it was sold for a mere £8,400.
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Also called Royal Victoria or Royal Gloucester Hotel, the hotel got its present name about the time Victoria was crowned.
Among the many distinguished guests staying at the Queen’s belong Prince Louis Jerome Napoleon, the Rajah of Sarawak, the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, the explorer Nansen, Edward Elgar, Arthur Conan Doyle and General Napier, who is commemorated in the name of one of the hotel’s suite. During the Second World War when the hotel was an American Services Club, the building was visited by Bob Hope and Glenn Miller.
Outside the main entrance stands an ornate plinth. It is one of a pair on which two cannons captured at Sebastopol during the Crimean War were once mounted. They were given to Cheltenham in recognition for its fund raising. At the base of the plinth it still says ‘Taken at Sebastopol’, but in April 1942 both guns were recycled as armaments. |
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