Okay this may not be Formby but The Palace hotel in Southport was once one of the most premier hotels in country, attracting famous international celebrities as guests.
Today’s building of interest is The Fishermens rest pub in Southport. I have a great love for this building as my Uncle Bernie, a great practical joker, worked as Site Director on the demolishing of the Palace Hotel to the South of this pub and then on the development of the housing estate which is there in its place.
For those of you who have read my previous post, you may notice a common theme here. The demolishing of historical buildings to build modern houses. Sadly this was a very common theme in the 50s and 60s. Did you know nearby Chester had the largest, most complete Roman mosaics in Europe and amazing Roman buildings until they were bulldozed in the late 50s and sent to landfill.
Anyways back to the Fishermens rest. The building that you see today is actually the coach house where visitors to the Palace Hotel would be dropped off at the entrance and then the horse and coaches be taken to this out-building for refreshments of both horse and driver before their return journey, most often to Liverpool almost 20 miles away.
The building itself was built along with the majestic Palace Hotel, according to architectural drawings drafted in February 1864 as seen by my Uncle. He tells me that far from being built facing the wrong way, the hotel was always designed to have the most guest rooms with a sea view for obvious reasons. Indeed 2 floors of these rooms were designed to have sea facing verandas. The architectural layout envisioned the hotels grand entrance and dining rooms having inland views. My uncle also confirmed rather than having one architect, who myths say committed suicide, there were no less than five signaturies entitled architect on plans drawn up by Cuffleys and Co, Princess Street.
The Palace hotel originally had 75 rooms but due to low demand the number was reduced when the hotel was redesigned as a hydro spa hotel following the success of the nearby Smedley Hydro spa hotel.
It was so successful during this time it had its own dedicated train station and was extended to increase bedroom count to 200.
Over the years the hotel attracted many famous guests such as Frank Sinatra and Clark Gable, both who arrived by plane landing on a short airstrip adjacent to the hotel.
Sadly this grand hotel was demolished in the late 60s which brings me back to my Uncle Bernie.
A practical joker who was in charge of demolition. His greatest prank was scaring the pants off his demolition team when he sent the hotel main lift down to the lobby empty to where they had gathered. He had told them that the hotel had been disconnected from the power grid, which is true. What he didn’t tell them was that the lift had an emergency power generator on the top floor as a contingency in case power supply failed and people were stuck in the lift.
The last joke my uncle played was when he instructed the pub draftsmen to name the pub Fishermens, a double plural, rather than Fisherman’s which still makes him smile today