THE IMPERIAL HOTEL, HEREFORD

....And off we go on an imperial jaunt around two landmarks of VBCW Hereford, from the Imperial Cafe in St. Peter's Street to the Imperial Hotel in Widemarsh Street:

1930s advertising for the Imperial Hotel,
including 4 digit telephone numbers and 
telegraphic address. Mr J.M.Jones
is the Manager.

Two excellent photographs of the Imperial Hotel in August 1933,
some three years before the Abdication Crisis of December 1936.
Hitler is the newly installed Chancellor of Germany (from January 1933);
Ramsay McDonald is Prime Minister of Great Britain,
leading a 'National Government' formed after the
economic crisis of 1931.

 And so on with the VBCW:

A lonely VBCW researcher, disappointed to find that the Imperial Cafe no longer exists
and the Capital & County Dining and Refreshment Rooms is now a disused Starbucks,
proceeds with manly stride - more in hope than expectation -
right turn down Commercial Street, then an immediate left and....

...comes face to face with the Imperial Hotel in Widemarsh Street, still in business and
utterly unchanged (apart from pedestrianisation) from the 1938 VBCW! 

We're slowly building up a picture of Hereford's VBCW Hotels, from the well known stay of Reichsmarschall Goering at the Castle House Hotel, to the infamous doings at the Green Dragon Hotel in Broad Street, and now the Imperial Hotel. And who is staying at the Imperial during the VBCW? Mr J.M. Jones is remaining tight lipped, muttering only about "a block booking" from "an Indian gentleman of utmost quality...and his entourage." Further investigations will be required...

And is there a connection between the Imperial Cafe and the Imperial Hotel? It seems that there is, in the person of Hereford's most famous Edwardian pioneer photographer, naturalist, inventor of the "Watkins Bee Meter" and discoverer of "Ley Lines", Mr Alfred Watkins:

Alfred Watkins (1855 - 1935)

It appears that Alfred's father, Charles, a vigorous Victorian entrepeneur, named all his businesses "Imperial" in one form or another, "ending up with an 'Imperial Empire' in Hereford to the extent that his daughters (Alfred's sisters) were known behind his back as "their Imperial Highnesses"." Such family wealth clearly allowed Alfred some leisure to develop his many and varied interests in later life - see his Wikipedia entry HERE and the longer and more informative piece on the Woolhope Club's website HERE. A fascinating man (see also this entry for Alfred Watkins) who left behind the most extensive collection of Herefordshire photographs possible (many from just before the VBCW period) as preserved and presented by Herefordshire History HERE. Well worth a browse!