The Grand Hotel is a large hotel in Scarborough, England, overlooking the town's South Bay. It is a Grade II listed building that is owned by Britannia Hotels; it has recently undergone a £7 million refurbishment.
The hotel was designed by the Hull architect Cuthbert Brodrick and when completed in 1867 was one of the largest hotels in the world, as well as one of the first giant purpose-built hotels in Europe. The hotel’s distinctive yellow bricks were sourced locally in Hunmanby.
The building is designed around the theme of time: four towers represent the seasons, 12 floors are the months of the year, 52 chimneys symbolise the weeks, and originally there were 365 bedrooms, one for each day of the year. The hotel’s heyday was arguably during Victorian times, when wealthy holidaymakers made up the establishment's clientele.
As Scarborough was a famous spa town, the building's baths originally included an extra pair of taps, so guests could wash in seawater as well as fresh water.
The hotel was badly damaged when the German Navy bombarded the town in 1914.
Modern Times
The hotel was bought by Butlins, the company better-known for its holiday camps, in 1978, and run as an inexpensive choice of accommodation until it was sold to Britannia in 1998.
Three blue plaques outside mark where the novelist Anne Brontë died in 1849, the contribution of the RAF trainees stationed at the hotel during World War II and the original opening of the building respectively.
