I’m back in Brundall again for this post with another preview of some of the photographs from the John Chesney Collection which are waiting to be added to the main Broadland Memories website. John’s photographs provide a wonderful record of The Norfolk & Suffolk Broads between the 1970s and the 1990s, along with providing a record of past hire boats and changed landscapes, the collection also contains a selection of images which capture the aftermath of some rather dramatic events.
The former Riverside Hotel at Brundall
I mentioned the old Riverside Hotel which once stood at Brundall Gardens in a previous blog post and amongst John’s photographs was this one, dating from the early 1990s, which shows the building as it was then. Built in the 1920s by Frederick Holmes-Cooper as part of his development of Brundall Gardens into a major tourist attraction, by the early 1970s the building had fallen into a state of disrepair. Colin Chapman (the founder of the Lotus motor racing team) moved into boat manufacture and design in 1971 when he purchased Moonraker Marine from Bell Buxton Boats Ltd. and formed the JCL Marine company at Brundall. In the early 1970s, the company moved to the former Brundall Gardens site and the old hotel building was renovated and used as offices. JCL Marine produced various boats during the 1970s including the Moonraker 36, the Marauder and the Mystere but, unfortunately, the company went into voluntary liquidation in 1980.
The Riverside Hotel building after the fire in 1993
The Brundall Archive website mentions that the former hotel building was later condemned, which almost seems hard to believe when you see the photograph above from the early 1990s. Tragedy struck on the 13th August 1993 when the building was gutted by fire after being struck by lightening during a storm. On sorting through the box of John’s photographs I happened to come across the image on the left which was taken just a few weeks after that dreadful event, and shows the burnt out remains of the once magnificent hotel. It’s such a sad sight to see, and shows just how much of the building was destroyed in the fire. Going back to that original post about Brundall Gardens, by way of a follow up, I included a photograph of the derelict cottage which stood just to the west of the hotel, this has now apparently been demolished and the site cleared.
I am still working on getting the 1970s photographs from John Chesney’s collection onto the main website. Tuesday afternoon was spent resizing and watermarking the 110 photos which I have decided to use, and I put in around nine hours work yesterday laying out and captioning the first batch of 42 images which cover the rivers Wensum and Yare between Norwich and Reedham. These were successfully uploaded to Broadland Memories this afternoon and I hope to begin work on the second batch next week!
