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09-04-2018, 11:38
Visit the Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog site (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/04/motel-1-1953/)
This isn’t about pubs, or maybe it is: in June 1953 Britain gained its first American-style motel, The Royal Oak, at Newingreen outside Dover, Kent. The Royal Oak was, as the name suggests, an old inn, apparently established in 1560 and rebuilt in the 18th century (http://www.dover-kent.com/Royal-Oak-Newingreen.html). It was around this core that the new motel was constructed by entrepreneur Graham Lyon.
Lyon was born in London in 1889 and worked with early automobiles as a youth. In the 1920s he was a pioneer of coach trips to the Continent, driving tourists around in a 10-seater Ford Model T charabanc (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/02/charabanc-fever/). After World War II he entered the hotel business, starting with The White Cliffs in Dover. Something of an Americophile, his dealings with Americans during and after the war gave him the idea that Britain was deficient in hotels designed specifically for motorists and so, in 1952, approaching pensionable age, he set off to tour the US visiting more than 2,000 motels on an epic road-trip. He picked the brains of American moteliers and came back ready to implement his own take in the British market.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/aerial_view_royal_oak_dover.jpg
Each room in The Royal Oak motel had its own private garage and en suite bathroom. The larger suites had their own sitting rooms. For between 21s and 27s 6d per person (about £30 in today’s money) you got a Continental breakfast, a radio, a tea-making machine, telephone, a water dispenser, and your car washed and valeted.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/sitting_room_royal_oak_dover.jpg
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/car_outside_royal_oak_dover.jpg https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/bar_royal_oak_dover.jpg
The Royal Oak was the first of a chain intended to be 12-strong but by the time Lyon died in 1963 there were still only five, with the others being at Southampton, Epping, Exeter and Frome. The partnership he founded with Watney’s in 1961, Watney Lyon hotels, carried on after his death and eventually opened quite a few more, as did other firms such as Trusthouse Forte.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/1965_ad_ILN_31_07.jpgSOURCE: Illustrated London News, 31 July 1965. Writing for the Illustrated London News*on 31 July 1965*Roger Elliot reckoned there were about 62 in 1965 with another 80 on the way. He also points out, though, that many of these didn’t call themselves motels and were really just new hotels that happened to be out-of-town with car parks, rather than in towns near train stations like the old ones built for Victorian commercial travellers.
All this might seem tangential to our interest in pubs except that the motel is clearly a development of the idea of the inn — somewhere you stopped to eat, drink and sleep on your way from one place to another — and that the major brewing firms came to invest so much in this new industry. Sixty-odd years on Whitbread does no brewing whatsoever but does own a lot of Premier Inn hotels, sometimes attached to old inns, or sometimes with brand new pubs specially built to serve them.
And when we’re thinking about the decline of the pub, as with the more general decline of shopping centres, surely we’ve got to take into account the general drift of commerce to the outskirts of towns — to those spaces beyond the ring-road, near the motorway junction, which can seem soulless and rather desolate, but where we’ve all ended up for sheer convenience at one time or another.
The Royal Oak motel itself? It*closed in 1989 and the building became offices (http://oakcreative.net/blog/a-brief-history-of-the-royal-oak-building-newingreen/).
Other Sources
The House of Whitbread, Summer 1954
The Red Barrel: the story of Watney Mann, Hurford Janes, 1963
Motel #1, 1953 (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/04/motel-1-1953/) originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog (https://boakandbailey.com)
More... (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/04/motel-1-1953/)
This isn’t about pubs, or maybe it is: in June 1953 Britain gained its first American-style motel, The Royal Oak, at Newingreen outside Dover, Kent. The Royal Oak was, as the name suggests, an old inn, apparently established in 1560 and rebuilt in the 18th century (http://www.dover-kent.com/Royal-Oak-Newingreen.html). It was around this core that the new motel was constructed by entrepreneur Graham Lyon.
Lyon was born in London in 1889 and worked with early automobiles as a youth. In the 1920s he was a pioneer of coach trips to the Continent, driving tourists around in a 10-seater Ford Model T charabanc (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/02/charabanc-fever/). After World War II he entered the hotel business, starting with The White Cliffs in Dover. Something of an Americophile, his dealings with Americans during and after the war gave him the idea that Britain was deficient in hotels designed specifically for motorists and so, in 1952, approaching pensionable age, he set off to tour the US visiting more than 2,000 motels on an epic road-trip. He picked the brains of American moteliers and came back ready to implement his own take in the British market.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/aerial_view_royal_oak_dover.jpg
Each room in The Royal Oak motel had its own private garage and en suite bathroom. The larger suites had their own sitting rooms. For between 21s and 27s 6d per person (about £30 in today’s money) you got a Continental breakfast, a radio, a tea-making machine, telephone, a water dispenser, and your car washed and valeted.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/sitting_room_royal_oak_dover.jpg
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/car_outside_royal_oak_dover.jpg https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/bar_royal_oak_dover.jpg
The Royal Oak was the first of a chain intended to be 12-strong but by the time Lyon died in 1963 there were still only five, with the others being at Southampton, Epping, Exeter and Frome. The partnership he founded with Watney’s in 1961, Watney Lyon hotels, carried on after his death and eventually opened quite a few more, as did other firms such as Trusthouse Forte.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/1965_ad_ILN_31_07.jpgSOURCE: Illustrated London News, 31 July 1965. Writing for the Illustrated London News*on 31 July 1965*Roger Elliot reckoned there were about 62 in 1965 with another 80 on the way. He also points out, though, that many of these didn’t call themselves motels and were really just new hotels that happened to be out-of-town with car parks, rather than in towns near train stations like the old ones built for Victorian commercial travellers.
All this might seem tangential to our interest in pubs except that the motel is clearly a development of the idea of the inn — somewhere you stopped to eat, drink and sleep on your way from one place to another — and that the major brewing firms came to invest so much in this new industry. Sixty-odd years on Whitbread does no brewing whatsoever but does own a lot of Premier Inn hotels, sometimes attached to old inns, or sometimes with brand new pubs specially built to serve them.
And when we’re thinking about the decline of the pub, as with the more general decline of shopping centres, surely we’ve got to take into account the general drift of commerce to the outskirts of towns — to those spaces beyond the ring-road, near the motorway junction, which can seem soulless and rather desolate, but where we’ve all ended up for sheer convenience at one time or another.
The Royal Oak motel itself? It*closed in 1989 and the building became offices (http://oakcreative.net/blog/a-brief-history-of-the-royal-oak-building-newingreen/).
Other Sources
The House of Whitbread, Summer 1954
The Red Barrel: the story of Watney Mann, Hurford Janes, 1963
Motel #1, 1953 (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/04/motel-1-1953/) originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog (https://boakandbailey.com)
More... (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/04/motel-1-1953/)