The Adelphi Hotel

Manor Road. Demolished 2000.

My friend worked at the Adelphi Hotel on Manor Road which had been bought by the previous owner of the Roundhouse.  

When a job became available, I went to work there as well, which coincided with a new owner taking over - the boxer John H. Stracey.

It was quite quiet when I first started,  with a lot of elderly residents who lived there and enjoyed having all their meals provided for them, with afternoon tea in the lounge every afternoon. A sort of Care Home without the care.  It was all quite sedate until we started having weekly coach tours which made the hotel much busier and noisier than they were used to. 

The final horror for them was the public bar, which had been mainly unused, being turned into the Ringside Bar and hosting topless Go-Go dancers at the weekend. The Ringside Bar suddenly became a very popular place for the young male population of Bournemouth.

The Adelphi had the oddest assortment of characters, mainly the staff. The day porter delighted in being rude. He would push the tea trolley into the Lounge and shout ‘Come on, you gannets’ and walk away chuckling. The elderly residents viewed him with a sort of affection though, mainly because he hated the coach tours even more than they did.

The restaurant was next to reception and one morning when I was sitting at the desk, a cockroach crawled over my foot. My scream brought the head waiter out who whispered ‘say it was a mouse’ which he obviously thought was the lesser of 2 evils.

I was head receptionist at the Adelphi although there wasn’t much prestige in that! We still did the accounts in a manual ledger and had a dolls eye switchboard. 

I stayed on and off for a couple of years. The hotel changed hands again and was renamed the Regent for a while. It eventually closed and there was a fire, before being demolished and replaced with flats. 

I took many photos there when it was derelict and also when it was being demolished, which made me a bit sad. The flats that replaced it look attractive though, which is unusual!