The Bite Magazine - Spring/Summer 2023 - Issue 33

Jada Brookes learns about Principal York Hotel’s history and Head Chef Aaron Craig’s passion for local produce and his unique twist to British cuisine. biterestaurant H istory provides an opportunity to reflect on and honour the past from the present and future. As such, the historic Grade II Principal York Hotel captured the great ‘Railway Age’ when iron roads crisscrossed the country. When the original building opened as Station Hotel in 1853, it had 15 reception rooms and 55 bed- rooms. After Queen Victoria’s lunch visit on her way to Scotland the following year, the hotel owners felt privileged to add the prefix ‘Royal’ to its name. Having outgrown its purpose by 1865, the new five-storey Royal Station Hotel was built in 1878, a year after the station was completed. British architect William Peachey renowned for his work with North Eastern Railway, was commissioned to design the Scarborough yel- low brick hotel featuring elegant, high-ceilinged banqueting rooms for social functions and 100 large bedrooms to accommodate the aristocra- cy of the North, wealthy Yorkshire industrialists or anyone who could afford 14 shillings a night. Guests could access the hotel through three entrances: the East End or town, the West or garden, and the handsomely tiled octagonal entrance from the station and its forecourt that most of the hotel’s patrons used when travelling by rail. The West entrance (now the tallest part) was replaced by a new 27-bedroom wing called ‘The Klondyke’ built in the year of the 1896 Klondike Gold Rush in America. Today, most visitors use the garden entrance dating back to 1939, leading to the drive and car park. The extended coffee room renamed the Gar- den Room, had views that once extended right down to the River Ouse. The conference room in the Klondyke wing remains the only part of the hotel protected by a conservation order. Its magnificent carved oak panelling once created a club-like ambience for guests when it was a reading room, and it is now known as The Oak Room, where you can still see the existing wooden reading racks. In 1923, London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) took over the hotel. They built a new wing with an entrance, art deco lighting, and furnishings that replaced many Victorian fea-