Shrewsbury hotel's lordly opening

So the contemporary Lord Hill, of Coton Hall, near Whitchurch, was delighted to do the honours.

Wielding a sword, he cut the blue ribbon to declare the hotel open on November 26, 1964, and then moved inside to pull the first pint in the bar.

The huge Georgian house in the shadow of The Column, which was formerly known as The Shrubbery and the home of the Southam family, had been converted into a hotel, restaurant and grill room by Southam's Brewery, at a cost of about £50,000.

Today the hotel is no more, having closed on January 1. So when John Ruscoe of Shrewsbury recently came by the very first issue of the Shropshire Star, dated October 5, 1964, his eye was caught by an article inside about the opening.

It told how Lord Hill had been delighted when the brewery asked his permission to call the hotel The Lord Hill after his illustrious ancestor, and overjoyed when he was asked to open it.

"But Lord Hill (family motto: 'Advance') is used to pulling pints because he runs a licensed restaurant at his ancestral home in Coton," it went on.

"The rest of the hall is let out for flats, apart from his lordship's private rooms. He has been twice hammered by death duties and has had to resort to these money-making ventures 'to keep the old house going.'"

John said: "I have a picture of Lord Hill when he was the secretary of the Hawkstone Park Golf Club in 1962. He is pictured standing on the first tee of the golf course with his dog and the Hawkstone Park Hotel in the background."

John also emailed in a couple of pictures of Coton Hall in 1920 and added: "The Hawkstone Park Golf Club is celebrating its centenary this year with a number of events taking place through the year."

Speaking at the opening of the Lord Hill Hotel all those years ago, the managing director of Southam's, Walter Southam, said his late brother Roger had conceived the idea of converting the house into a hotel, but had died before the dream had been realised.