BED AND BREAKFAST IN SURREY

The Avon Gorge Hotel, and the disused Clifton Rocks Railway boarding area(Left)
The hotel was built opened in 1898 as a hot spring spa. Hot springs made the city famous back then, as the one below in Hotwells bubbled up between tides at 76 degrees centigrade, and folk flocked country wide to sample them as it was believed to cure almost anything and became very fasionable. The Hotwells area of Bristol got its name from the very same reason. The hot water was said to be 175% more radioactive than the public water used!
By the late 1600's the water was being bottled and shipped worldwide. This also made the city famous for its glass making!
In the 1890's, an application was made to the Merchant Venturers to build the Clifton Rocks Railway with a "Hydropathic Institution" attatched! The Hot well water was pumped up through the rocks to the Institution that stands next to the Hotel.
In later years, Officers would stand on the terrace of the Avon Gorge Hotel to watch flypasts of their newly qualified Pilots swoop under the Clifton Suspension Bridge. It must of been a spectacular sight indeed!
In more recent time, the Hotel was a favourite of the famous, like Hollywood actor Cary Grant, who would stay here when visiting his mother who remained living in Bristol.
The railway ceased ferrying passengers from Hotwells to Clifton when it closed in the 1930's. During WW2 however, the carriages were removed & it was used as a safe place for the BBC to continue broadcasting vital war time information. The BBC Radio's licence expired in 1960, and it closed for good. It still remains the only four track funicular railway in the entire UK.
Personally, I think its a tragic shame this increadible feat of engineering has been left to rot. It would be wonderfull to re-open it as a tourist attraction or something, and that gorgeous cluster of about 4 tiny houses at the foot, be turned into a museum of its history & the Hotels maybe?

In the 1950s and 60s the Grand Spa became the most popular dance venue in Bristol. Forty years later a fan still remembered “I was one of the girls tramping down the steep stairway wearing either hugely bouffant petticoats or very tight skirts and if for some reason I wasn’t able to go there at least once a week, life just wasn’t worth living"

The Grand Spa ballroom was without doubt the most glamorous venue in Bristol”. Twice weekly it hosted Bristol’s best dance bands, particularly John Roberts’ and Dennis Mann’s. There was also a faint chance of catching a glimpse of film star Cary Grant who often stayed at the hotel in the 1960s another very popular venue not far away was the Glen.