LONDON AND PARIS HOTEL DEMOLITION

Mystery solved at last

By Andy Gilbert and Carolyn Proud

If you look around Our Newhaven's many images of the Railway Quay, you'll see the famous London and Paris Hotel and  there are often comments asking when it was demolished.

It's been a really tough one to answer. In my own research, I narrowed it down to the mid 1950s. The late Peter Bailey MBE, in his book "Newhaven-Dieppe, from Paddler to Turbine" (published around 1970) stated that it was demolished in 1954 but when I spoke to him about this many years later, he simply said he didn't know for sure. That 1954 date may therefore have been an educated guess!

I'd seen photos of the hotel still in place in the mid 1950s and others taken in 1960 where it's clearly gone. And there was one more general view of the harbour with just the corner of the hotel at one edge of the image - with a large crane looming over it. That view was from the late 1950s and it made me wonder if we were seeing the demolition under way.

Anyway, my fellow Sussex historian Carolyn Proud has at last found the answer in, of all places, an issue of the Birmingham Post & Gazette, clearly dated Tuesday June 4th 1957! A small snippet of an article at the bottom right of the page states that British Railways had announced that demolition would take place that year.

My grateful thanks to Carolyn for her detective work that has put this mystery to rest!