St. Pancras Station and the Midland Grand Hotel (1868-76) as planned--with an extra storey that was never built. Wood-engraving. The main entrance is shown to the extreme left, through the arcaded porte cochère here. Source: Williams 666, in an appendix to his book. [Click on this and the following image to enlarge them.]
Photograph of St. Pancras Station and the Midland Grand Hotel as actually built, at the end of the period, from Stretton, facing p. 182.
At the time Frederick Williams was writing. the Midland Railway Company had four hotels: this new one, and others at Leeds, Derby and Morecambe. Stressing the growing importance of such facilities, Clement Stretton writes later, "The hotels of the Company are great aids to traffic in providing accommodation to passengers, and there is great inducement to travellers to select a route which is well supplied with hotels at large centres." Now, at the turn of the century, he is able to list several more such establishments:
The Midland line is unusually fortunate in this respect. It has the Grand Hotel at St. Pancras, London, the Adelphi Hotel at Liverpool, the Midland Hotel at Derby, the Midland Hotel at Bradford, the Midland Hotel at Morecambe, the Queen's Hotel, Leeds, the Midland Hotel, Manchester, and last, but certainly not least, the Residential Hotel, Heysham Towers, Heysham, near Morecambe. (343)
Notice, however, that the Midland Grand still heads the list. Stretton also mentions that the manager of the Hotels and Refreshments section of the company has his headquarters at St Pancras. The Midland Grand in the capital remained the company's pride and joy. In this connection it is interesting to note, though, that the engraving of Scott's original plan was still used in some of its publicity material — "an outrageous lie designed to make the building look even bigger" (Bradley 120).
Related material
- View from hotel end (photograph 2012)
- Soot-blackened St Pancras Sation and Railroad Hotel (photograph 1966)
[Image capture, formatting, and text by Jacqueline Banerjee. You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Sources
Bradley, Simon. St Pancras Station. Rev. and updated ed. London: Profile, 2011. Print.
Stretton, Clement Edwin. The History of the Midland Railway. London: Methuen, 1901. Internet Archive. Web. 27 October 2012.
Williams, Frederick Smeeton. The Midland Railway: Its Rise and Progress. A Narrative of Modern Enterprise. London: Strahan, 1876. Internet Archive. Web. 27 October 2012.