Scarborough’s Grand Hotel

Above is a detail from a painting of 1867 in the Scarborough Museum and Art Gallery - it shows the seaward side of the just completed Grand Hotel on a day of unusually perfect weather.  The artist is John Wilson Carmichael (1799-1868) whose speciality was maritime subjects and coastal views who retired to Scarborough after a working life based in Newcastle.

In 1852 Cuthbert Brodrick (1821-1905) won a national competition to design a Town Hall for the City of Leeds. When his ambitious design was finally complete in 1858 the opening ceremony was performed by Queen Victoria.  Brodrick was 37 years old and his building had been hailed as a triumph - he stood on the threshold of a brilliant career but it never quite happened.  It has been argued that while his contemporaries mostly worked under the influence of Classical tradition, Brodrick with his preference for the French Second Empire style (“opulent and coarse” in the words of Jonathan Meades) was increasingly out of step with public taste. For the Leeds design Brodrick had made use of Classical elements and restrained his Frenchified tendencies but in his design for the Leeds Corn Exchange he surrendered to his passion for the Halle aux Blés in Paris (later rebuilt as the Bourse de Commerce). For more about the Corn Exchange follow this link to my blogpost of 2008.

Scarborough’s Grand Hotel was Brodrick's last major commission and he seized the opportunity to design a massive and imposing exercise in Second Empire style that wouldn’t look out of place on Haussmann’s Parisian grands boulevards. Built on a V-shaped plan between 1863 and 1867, it was one of Europe's largest luxury hotels adorned with corner domed towers, rounded windows, ornamental balconies and terracotta decoration. On the landward side there are 4 floors plus 2 attic levels, facing the sea an additional 3 basement levels are visible. It is claimed that the 4 domes represent the 4 seasons, while there are 52 chimneys for the weeks in a year and 365 rooms for the days in a year. After remodelling today's hotel has only 250 rooms. It retains a formidable sense of presence on Scarborough’s South Bay but is no longer a destination for the wealthy visitor drawn by the restorative powers of the local Spa waters, operating as a budget hotel as part of the Britannia Hotels group. Britannia Hotels consistently occupy last place in the annual Which survey of customer satisfaction and make less than perfect custodians of Brodrick’s great landmark.  YouTube has many hostile amateur videos of the horrors to be encountered there - one of the less hysterical examples is embedded below and it makes depressing viewing.  There’s no avoiding the evidence of internal dilapidation and the mistreatment of key architectural features and elaborations that seem increasingly obscured by clumsy partitioning and lowered ceilings. This would be Brodrick's last major commission - in 1870 he retired to France where he and his wife lived quietly for decades in the well-heeled western Paris suburb of le Vesinet.

Corn Exchange, Leeds

On a recent visit to Leeds I had a wander around the city’s Corn Exchange (1860-62), a building designed by Cuthbert Brodrick and described as “of national, maybe international importance.” The design, like much of Brodrick’s work owes much to French precursors, in this case, the Halle au Blé in Paris built almost a hundred years earlier. Unusually for a domed building it has an oval footprint and the central oculus is elliptical. There is an additional asymmetric wedge shaped area of glazing that admits north light and can be seen in some of these photos. Order, symmetry and repetition of forms prevail in the interior space while the absence of internal structural support greatly enhances the exhilarating sense of scale.


After a protracted but thorough renovation, involving opening up the basement to create a third level, the Corn Exchange reopened in 1992 as an indoor shopping centre. Until recently it prospered, the retail units being let out, for the most part to independent traders. In November 2007 these traders were given notice to quit by new operators, Zurich Assurance. The displaced traders make a strong case in their blogspot. In the meantime, Zurich’s programme of refurbishment is almost complete as these photos confirm and they are pressing ahead with a scheme to transform the Corn Exchange into an up-market palace of food. Behind all this lurks a corporate imperative to maximise an investment by increasing rentals to the point where only high turnover, premium business can afford them. It’s an exercise in exclusivity, the objective being to provide goods and services that only those in the highest income groups can afford to buy. A landmark building of such grace and distinction should be accessible to all especially as the ownership still resides with Leeds City Council.