The Shandon Hydro

A "colossal pile with its minarets pointing to the sky", as it was once described (here), the building pictured above was demolished in 1960. Looking like nothing so much as the bastard offspring of Balmoral Castle and the Brighton Pavillion it was, in fact, the Shandon Hydro Hotel which stood on the east side of the Gareloch between Rhu and Garelochhead.

Though latterly a hotel, it was originally built in 1852 as the home of Robert Napier, the marine steam engine and shipbuilding magnate. Set in 60 acres of grounds, West Shandon, as Napier called it, was designed by the same architect as designed the Wallace Monument at Stirling and boasted a clock tower (the lower tower to the right), a sculpture gallery and a 165' long conservatory. Not everyone was impressed, though: Professor Kerr, author of The Gentleman's House; or, How to Plan English Residences From the Parsonage to the Palace (here), commented rather sniffily:-

The entrance-hall is much too small, unless we include with it the interior vestibule, which again, if large enough, becomes awkward in form. ... The dining-room must be considered out of rule except as a sitting-room; the character of form is not that of an eating-room at all; ... The offices [meaning the stables etc.] generally are very confined, and not instructive. The same must be said of the museums, picture-gallery and billiard-room in their relations to each other and to other apartments [i.e. rooms].

Ooh! How big are the museums in your house, Professor?

Professor Kerr's criticisms didn't prevent Robert Napier's trustees selling West Shandon after he died in 1876 for £37,500 - about £3.5 million in today's money. The purchaser was the Shandon Hydropathic Company who spent a further £17,000 (£1.6m today) installing Turkish and Russian Vapour baths, fresh and salt water spray and plunge baths and sea water swimming ponds. The conservatory was extended to 350' and a new wing was added (to the right of the clock tower in the pictures: photo pre-extension here and plans here) with 88 bedrooms bringing the total up to 132. In the grounds were tennis courts and a nine hole golf course and a pier was arranged 700 metres north in order that guests might arrive by the steamers of the North British Railway (which at that time terminated at Helensburgh, 5 miles away: when the railway was extended past the hotel on the way to Fort William in 1894, the new Shandon Station was a convenient 5 minute walk away.) If it all seems a bit extravagant, such was the fad for hydros at the time that, when the Shandon Hydropathic Company went public - at its IPO, as we'd say now - after the hotel opened in 1877, the shares were oversubscribed by about a third (between 9 and 10,000 applications for the 7,000 shares offered).  

The Shandon Hydropathic was requisitioned by the Admiralty in 1918 for the HQ of a submarine research facility on the Gareloch: model submarines were tested in the hotel's swimming pools. When this closed in 1921, the hotel was sold to a new company the managing director of which was Glasgow hotelier Robert Mitchell: he also had the Imperial Hotel at the top of Buchanan Street and the Kenilworth Hotel at the corner of Argyle and Queen Streets.  (Another director was the MD of The West of Scotland Laundry: like the shipping company that bought the quarries I wrote about here, was this another case of securing your trade by taking a stake in your biggest customer?) The price paid to the Admiralty plus the cost of various improvements totalled around £45,000 (about £2m today and contrast with the £54.5k spent in 1877) and subscribers for £100 or more of shares were promised a 10% discount on the price of stays at the revamped hotel which reopened in July 1922.

An article in The Sphere magazine in 1927 gushed about the facilities on offer at the Shandon Hydro, not least the two gymnasia, one for each sex. You had to be careful about that sort of thing in these days and the absence of single sex swimming pools at the hotel got a Mr Henderson, who lived in a pukkah house in Balloch, into bother in 1933 when his wife sued him for divorce on the basis of his alleged adultery with their neighbour, Mrs Hamilton, who lived in an even more pukkah house two miles up the road on the edge of Loch Lomond. Amongst the episodes averred by Mrs Henderson to establish her husband's infidelity was "an indelicate method of holding" Mrs Hamilton when teaching her to swim in the pool at the Shandon Hydro. The judge was unable to decide on the evidence led whether Mr Henderson had been supporting her by the chin or the body but remarked:

When once it was considered correct for men and women to bathe together, one must expect the stronger sex to help the weaker in their efforts to swim.      

The hotel was also a popular conference venue in the 1930s. These included get togethers of such diverse groups as the Scottish National Party in 1936 (it had only been formed in 1934), the Junior Imperialist Union in 1935 and the National Socialist Organisation (I think 'National Socialist' meant something different in Britain from what it meant in Germany at the time!) and the British and Scottish Esperanto Associations in 1938.

Although the hotel technically belonged to the Shandon Hydro Hotel Co. Ltd, its managing director Robert Mitchell was the licensee and generally regarded as the owner. In May 1936, he offered it for sale but died the same month. The following month his estate was declared bankrupt and I can't help wondering if the sale, the death and the bankruptcy in quick succession were linked? (In fact, the hotel had been sold briefly in 1930 to a Mrs Rathie, previously of the Callander Hydro, but Robert Mitchell seems to have been back in control in 1932.) Anyhow, the new owner from 1937, of both the Shandon Hotel and the late Mr Mitchell's Imperial Hotel in Glasgow, was Donald McLachlan but he'd had little time to consolidate his new acquisitions before the Shandon was requisitioned again at the start of the Second World War. It was used for the accommodation of army units in hutments in its grounds (and with the officers in the hotel itself, I'm guessing). Latterly it was occupied by Polish soldiers. They didn't finally leave until September 1947 and it wasn't until May 1951 that the hotel re-opened, still owned by Mr McLachlan (strictly his company called Shandon Hotel (1937) Ltd).

Advert in The Scotsman via The British Newspaper Archive

The advert above was published on Friday 13 April 1951 and the bad luck thereby presaged seems to have come to pass for, despite the two years of reconstruction and redecoration invested in it, prosperity didn't return to the Shandon Hydro after the War. 

Donald McLachlan died in 1954 of a heart attack while at the helm of his racing yacht on the Clyde. His hotels were inherited by his 25 year old son, Laughton. When his wedding was reported in the Daily Record in 1957 under the headline "Hotel King Weds Girl, 19, In Secret" he was described as 20 stone and Scotland's youngest millionaire. 

In November 1955, the year after Laughton McLachlan inherited the Shandon Hydro, the Daily Record ran a story a under the headline "The rich have gone ...":

Gone are the gay parties, the wealthy American tourists and the rich Scotsmen. The ballroom is silent. The swimming pools are empty. The golf course and tennis courts are deserted. The cocktail bars are closed. Shandon Hydro has fallen on hard times.

But Laughton had a plan: letting the rooms to people on a budget to live there. The prices ranged from 30 shillings (£1.50) a week for a room at the back with a shilling electric slot meter and no phone, through £2:2s (£2.10) a week for a room with burgundy rugs and a loch view up to £4:4s (£4.20) for an 'enormous' bedroom with adjoining sitting room and private bath. Amongst the residents the Record reporter spoke to was Macfie Stewart, 68 (picture below). A retired War Department clerk who'd also seen a bit of life in California and Toronto, he was now living solely on his pension and told the reporter he had to cut down on his food sometimes. He loved the Shandon deal where the food was "very cheap to suit people with a meagre income": breakfast was 1s:10d (£0.09), three course lunch 2s:9d (£0.14) and high tea 1s:3d (£0.06), all dished up at a 'serve-yourself bar' in the dining room: what would Professor Kerr have said? 

Presumably the chef de cuisine referred to in the advert (above) had been dispensed with but Miss Ellis, the manageress since the hotel had re-opened after the War in 1951, was still on station and taking the changes cheerfully: she said she'd had a dozen enquiries that morning, mostly pensioners but including two local workers and a young couple had stayed for a fortnight pending moving into a house in Helensburgh. Another resident was 'frail and entirely' widow, Mrs Bryson. She'd been living in a room (!) in Glasgow, then a commercial hotel until that became too dear even though they'd reduced their price for her: she believed her rheumatism had been much better since coming to Shandon.

Daily Record 2 November 1955 via The British Newspaper Archive

But the prices were obviously too cheap because the following year, 1956, Laughton McLachlan put the Shandon Hydro up for sale by auction. Eminently suitable as a hotel, hospital, hostel, convalescent home, school, research station, caravan or camping ground the auctioneer's advert claimed but it ended up being bought by a demolition firm for £10,500 for the slates, woodwork and fittings etc. - architectural salvage, we'd call that nowadays. Meanwhile, the grounds were converted into a caravan park and that was offered for sale the following year, 1957, at £5,500. The roofless shell of the stripped hotel was blown up by the Navy in 1960.

The Scotsman, 13 April 1960 via The British Newspaper Archive

A postscript on Laughton McLachlan is worth a paragraph. As well as the Imperial Hotel, he was also the owner of Glasgow's George Hotel (and see also here) on Buchanan Street and the Adelphi Hotel on what later became 'Boots Corner' on Argyle Street. In 1957, around the time he was disposing of Shandon, McLachlan acquired a controlling interest in the Eglinton Hotels chain for £1.25 million, at the time Scotland's biggest ever hotel purchase. Amongst the Eglinton portfolio were Edinburgh's George Hotel and Cafe Royal. In 1959, two of its directors requested a Board of Trade enquiry into the company's affairs after its profits mysteriously collapsed from £16,000 to a loss of £31,000 in the wake of the McLachlan takeover. The suspicion was that he was siphoning off from Eglinton to prop up his Glasgow hotels - which would be fine if he owned Eglinton outright but not when there were minority shareholders with no interest in the Glasgow operation but to whom he owed a duty of care. The BoT inspectors concluded there was a "grave suspicion that funds of the Eglinton company were dishonestly appropriated and ... consider that the circumstances are such as to merit a police enquiry." No charges were brought in the end but Eglinton sued McLachlan for £48,000 (about £875k in today's values) for "acting without due regard for the rights of shareholders". That was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. By then also the owner of a Glasgow taxi cab firm, Laughton McLachlan died in 1965 when the helicopter he was piloting crashed: the reports of that described him as the "mystery Scots businessman" with a reputation for being a "colourful person". He sounds like a character in an episode of Taggart.

All that remains of the Shandon Hydro today is the gate lodge:

Google Streetview

... and part of the seafront garden wall and balustrades:-

Google Streetview

And here's what's on the site today:-

Google Streetview

That's taken from almost exactly the same position as the various views of the hotel above. It looks like a prison but it's actually accommodation blocks of Faslane, or His Majesty's Naval Base (HMNB) Clyde to give it its Sunday name. Compare the two photos below both taken from about the same angle:-

Google Streetview

In a sense, one architectural monstrosity has been replaced with another.

Researching the Shandon Hydro brought me to a fork in the road of things which impact (or used to impact) on the Kyles and Western Isles but which I don't know as much as I should and therefore ought to look into: left for Faslane or right for west coast hydros generally? Eventually I took the left fork and Faslane it is. Coming soon ...