Stop 08
Victoria Hotel & the Ups and Downs
Picture a great resort hotel where woodland now covers foundations, garden paths and surviving specimen trees.
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From grand resort hotel to woodland memory
Thomas Hotchkin completed Woodhall’s first hotel in 1839 for visitors taking the waters. It was later replaced and greatly enlarged into the Victoria Hotel, a major nineteenth-century resort hotel set within extensive pleasure grounds.
Early on Easter Sunday, 4 April 1920, an electrical fault in the boiler room started a fire. Guests and staff escaped, but the hotel was gutted and never rebuilt. Woodland reclaimed the site. Vegetation grew over the foundations, creating low ridges and mounds that became known locally as the “Ups and Downs”. Some exotic and specimen trees from the hotel gardens still survive among the later woodland.
Next: Pinewoods & Church Walk
Continue through the Pinewoods only on the confirmed public route towards Church Walk. Lighting, roots, soft ground and seasonal conditions still need a physical check.