Above postcard, 1905.

Above photo, 1905.

Above postcard, date unknown.

Above postcard, circa late 1920s.

Above postcard, 1930.

Above photo, circa 1930.

Above postcard, overlooking Louisa Bay, date unknown.

Above postcard, postmarked 1933.

Above photo, 1952.

Above photo showing the swimming pool at the hotel, date pre 1980.

Excerpts from Hobbs Builder, from Jabez by David McKie.

The Grand Hotel, Broadstairs, on its cliff overlooking the channel, was reputed to be the best in the town. Built ten years before, in 1882, at a cost of £78,000, the Grand, with its 100 bedrooms, its capacious reading and smoking rooms, its billiards hall, and its fine views over the sea towards Belgium, belonged, in its aspirations at least, to that class of lavish palaces built by Hobbs for Jabez’s empire. Guests would be met at Broadstairs station by horse-drawn omnibuses supplied by the hotel management. Once installed, they could stroll along the cliff walk, past the little bandstand where a military band would often be playing, through the gardens opened by Princess Louise only that year and down to the picturesque harbour. The Grand is a block of apartments now, with a pub in the basement, but it still has a sense of the confidence with which it opened its doors to welcome the privileged and prosperous to the coast of Kent.

Here, on Sunday, 11 December 1892, a man presented himself at reception to ask if a Mr. Granville Wright was staying at the hotel. He was, though quite why is not clear. Was he perhaps enjoying a quiet weekend with his mistress, Mrs. Maybury? Or could he have made it his base while he contemplated flight to safety across the Channel? If so, he was not going to make it, for Inspector Moore of Scotland Yard had been having him watched for some days. Mr. Wright was summoned from his room and moments later was being escorted away to the station for the London train. It would all have been done most discreetly, with the reputation of the Grand not for one moment imperilled.

Mr. Hobbs, the progressive builder, was not so fortunate. He had been holding one of the musical evenings of which he was famously fond and which Jabez loved to tease him about. Now the civilized tranquillity of the evening was interrupted by a knock on the door and an urgent summons. Inspector Moore, accompanied by Inspector Tunbridge, was anxious to have a word. The music was summarily halted, and the guests from whom he was taken said Hobbs had been deeply upset and had left loudly protesting his innocence.

Soon the news was all over Croydon. Wright’s arrest was a matter of minor significance - ‘a thin, weazened, and very irascible man’ the Croydon Times called him, who was nowadays rarely seen in the town. But Hobbs...! Like Jabez, he had twice been mayor of the borough; his fame as a builder and entrepreneur had spread well beyond Croydon; his cricket ground, close to his splendid house at Norbury, had seen W. G. Grace himself in action, and one of Queen Victoria’s sons, not......

Peter Hobbs kindly tells me the following:- The Samuel Butler of the chapter title proved to be Jabez Balfour incognito: he had fled to Argentina where there was no extradition treaty with UK, but his cashing of cheques against a Croydon bank was his undoing.

It took a couple of years for the UK police to get their man.

He was eventually returned to face a jury at The Old Bailey in October 1895. He got 14 years with hard labour but was released in 1906.

Sadly his investors never saw their money.

From an email received 9 May 2019.

When I was a child, during the late 1940’s/1950s, my father a musician and trumpet player named Jack Ward of the Winston Lee Quintet, played summer seasons at the "Grand Hotel," in Broadstairs.

My mother and I joined him from Nottinghamshire every summer, for six glorious weeks in Broadstairs. We stayed in ‘digs’ with the Goldup family. (I may have misspelled the name Goldup) I remember a little boy of the family named Keith, (he’d be in his early 70’s now) but we stayed with the Grandma whom I knew as ‘Auntie Florrie’.

I have distinct memories of the Hotel, not of the ballroom, as I was but a little girl but of the morning outdoors sessions under a broad yellow and white striped awning at the side of the hotel and the band played whilst guests relaxed in the sunshine. (I’m certain the sun shone daily.) It must have been a performance for guests with children. I remember occasional ‘novelty numbers’ e.g. Jack playing with a monkey glove puppet, on his left hand, the monkey ‘playing the trumpet’ & doing a number called, “Little red monkey” After the session ended we always went to the Punch and Judy show on the beach, every day!!! I remember their dog, Toby, who sat on the shelf atop the Punch and Judy booth.

Regards,

Diane Champion.