The Great Northern Hotel

Outshone a bit by its show-offy neighbour, the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel across the road, I actually like the rather more simple Great Northern Hotel. Now partly swallowed up as a result of developments to King’s Cross station next door, the building has a distinguished history as one of the country’s earliest purpose-built railway hotels and has Grade II listed status.

Standing at the entrance to King’s Cross station, the Great Northern Hotel is a fine example of clean-cut, classical elegance as contrasted with the gothic grandeur (or monstrosity, depending on your viewpoint!) of its neighbours - George Gilbert Scott’s St Pancras Station and Renaissance Hotel.

Early photo showing gated precinct & gardens

Built of yellow brick and with stucco dressings, the hotel was designed by Lewis Cubitt (younger brother of Thomas who designed so many of London’s most iconic buildings) and opened in 1854 to serve the new King’s Cross Station, completed by the architect just two years before. Originally the hotel looked across a gated precinct with ornamental gardens – popular with wealthy hotel patrons who wanted to be screened off from screen the less salubrious terraced streets to the north of the hotel, but over the years this area was annexed by station buildings and became “Station Place”.

One of the earliest purpose-built railway hotels in the country, the Great Northern was not only considered a glamorous place to stay, it was also ahead of its time in terms of structure and facilities. It boasted a state of the art fire-resistant construction, with thick masonry walls dividing every room, corridors constructed of brick arches, and stair landings and treads of stone rather than

The hotel in 2017

timber.  It had 160 rooms, including about 100 bedrooms and attached sitting rooms (the hotel was one of the first to include rooms on this “continental system”), and a hydraulic lift was added in the 1880s. The public rooms on the ground floor included a smoking room, a reading room, as well as lounges and a coffee room (later known as the dining-room). This latter room was the largest in the hotel, occupying four bays and the full width of the southern end of the building - a space of some 9 m by 14 m. It reportedly “rivalled

Map of King's Cross 1862
 

that of the Great Western Royal Hotel as the finest in London”. An underground ice-house to the north of the hotel, known from plans of the hotel, was linked by a short alley into the hotel cellars. With refrigeration yet to be developed, ice would be brought in bulk during the winter from Scandinavia, Canada, or elsewhere, and stored for use in the kitchens over the next months in underground structures known as ice-houses.
One of the most interesting features of the hotel is its shape. Interestingly, the Italianate-style curved frontage is not just an aesthetic flourish by the architect. It was designed to snugly follow the curve of Pancras Road, as this map from 1862 shows (the hotel is marked just south of the green area), and this ancient highway in turn followed along the banks of the River Fleet… hence the curve.

The hotel's Plum & Spilt Milk restaurant

The Great Northern Hotel in its original form had been in continuous operation for nearly 150 years before it closed in 2001. After lying derelict for a few years, it was resurrected in 2009 and has now undergone a £40 million pound makeover. Many of Cubitt’s original architectural features have been retained, creating what the architects call “a classic yet contemporary look”.  And though it may lack the visual drama of Gilbert Scott's Gothic monster, it is more ‘authentic’. Whereas most of the Renaissance's rooms are in a modern block to one side of the historic building, all the Great Northern’s rooms are part of the original structure.

And now, aptly enough given the reason for its creation in the first place, the hotel is permanently attached to King’s Cross station, the planners having taken the decision to incorporate it into the sweeping glass and white steel canopy that now forms the new entrance to the station. Entrance to the hotel itself is either from the station or from the street side, its front door facing St Pancras.

 References:

London’s Hidden Rivers David Fathers (2017)
https://www.kingscross.co.uk/media/48-HBS-Part-1.pdf