I was recently approached by the local magazine, "Grange Now". They are based in Grange Over Sands and contacted me for some stories about the Grange Grand Hotel. Obviously I was happy to oblige! Below is what I sent to them.....
Three Tales from the Grand Hotel
The Grange over Sands Grand Hotel has been open for 137 years. During this time, it has been known by three different names. When it opened in 1887 it was called the Hazelwood Hydro and provided the era’s fashionable health-giving treatments. In 1920 the Hazelwood Hydro was renamed the Golf Hotel reflecting the growing mood for leisure activities on holiday. Later on, it became the Grand Hotel, which was a must have for all seaside resorts of the time.
Tale 1 1907
The lives of those employed at any of the Grand Hotels seldom run smoothly and it is the same for those employed at the Hazelwood Hydro (as the Grange Grand Hotel was known when it first opened). In September 1907 a maid employed at the hotel; Tamar Annie Wilding was involved in a crime that made many of the local and national newspapers. Tamar had for a while, been involved with a young iron ore miner called William Causey. William had strong feelings for Tamar, but Tamar had tired of him. When she tried to distance herself from William, he struggled to move on. Tamar had begun seeing a different young man called Joseph Rainford, who was a groom at the Hazelwood Hydro. One evening whilst Tamar and Joseph were walking together, they came across William who had been waiting for them. William confronted Tamar, but when she rejected him, he produced a gun to and shot her twice. Tamar fell to the ground and William immediately put the gun in his mouth and shot himself. Tamar wasn’t actually injured. She had been saved by her seemingly substantial corset. By some miracle both bullets hit the metal in her stays and bounced off. She had fainted to the ground through shock rather than injury. William died instantly. In his lodgings a note was found in which he said; “Just a line to let you know I intend killing myself and the girl I have always loved. It is all through her mother. I am not insane; only broken hearted. I wish everything I possess to be given to my half-brother George Causey, Lindale-in-Cartmel. May God forgive me. W. Causey.” (As reported in Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser 21st September 1907).
Unable to avoid being labelled a scarlet woman, Tamar left Grange soon after, and can be seen on the 1911 census, working as a waitress in the Hazelwood’s sister hotel the Imperial, St. Anne’s-on-Sea, but this time using her middle name “Annie” to try to regain some anonymity. As an aside, the name Tamar seems quite unusual, but there are one or two in the area. The name was probably brought to the area by the ironstone miners, many of whom had come from the copper and tin mines in Cornwall, at a time when these reserves were becoming harder to get to. The river Tamar separates Cornwall from its neighbouring county of Devon and the crossing of the Tamar is like a symbolic coming home for Cornish people.
Tale 2 1920
The rise in sport and outdoor leisure pursuits such as golf resulted in the new golf course being built in Grange and the Hazelwood Hydro changing its name to the Golf Hotel to emphasise its proximity to the course. In 1920 the hotel’s adverts contained a new feature; a “Flying Ground”. Aviation was still relatively new at this point, but it was a growing craze. Wanting to keep up with the latest means of transport and having plenty of room to oblige, the Grand set up its own landing strip. This was ideal because getting to the area had always been a problem, but by air from one of the many aerodromes, it was much quicker.
Flying had been popular in Lancashire since its earliest days. Displays of aerobatics and speed were held regularly and the pilots and their aeroplanes were treated as celebrities in the same way as racing drivers are now. An aviation week was held in Blackpool in the years 1909 and 1910. These stopped after a boy was killed during a display at the town’s racecourse during the 1910 week. A plane hit a flagpole, breaking it and sending it falling to the ground where it hit a killed the child. The pilot got away with a broken leg.
In December 1921 a local Carlisle aviation company called Ingham and Little, who took passengers on pleasure flights and also photographers, crash landed when an engine caught fire, narrowly avoiding killing those onboard the plane. Another crash landing by the same company (but calling themselves Border Aviation at the time, in 1920) occurred in Scarborough, whist carry passengers on a joy-ride flight over the coast. The accident prone Ingram and Little probably made use of the hotel’s landing strip for their pleasure flights. The Ingham and Little aviation company was jointly owned by Percy H Ingham and Robert F Little. Percy was mainly a photographer and Robert was a pilot. They also employed another pilot called Sidney F Woods. All three were prominent in the history of aviation in the UK. Numerous newspaper reports of the time include them in feats of aviation as well as spectacular accidents. Robert Little is included in the “stop press” column of Gloucester Citizen 2nd September 1927, which reported on “another transatlantic flight”, alongside another pilot and two German engineers. Robert also flew as a mechanic on a flight with the Duchess of Bedford, when she completed a round trip to India in August 1929.
At this time aviation was dangerous as pilots were allowed to fly with little experience and often no formal instruction. Basically, if you could afford an aeroplane you were allowed to fly it, once you had worked out how to. Suffice to say that the “flying ground” was a short-lived feature of the hotel.
Tale 3 1956
An intriguing article in the Lancaster Guardian of 3rd August 1956 reports on a stillroom man working at the Grand Hotel called William Simmonds. William is interesting because the article goes on to tell us about his career as a stunt man.
William Simmonds was born on 9th May 1900 in Lancashire. On leaving school he joined a travelling circus. It was in the circus that he learned the skills of an acrobat and the nerves of steel that would serve him later on when he became a stunt man. In the past he had worked in theatres as well on film and was known to be able to go into a trance. He also worked at the Manchester Theatre Royal before it became a cinema in 1921, where he performed the stunts for the show “The Easter Parade”. His biggest break was possibly working on the film “Splinters in the Navy” which was shot in Twickenham, London in 1931 and was a comedy in a trio of films, which also included “Splinters” (1929) and “Splinters in the Air” (1937). He reminisces about some of his stunts, particularly swinging from the cinema roof and being locked in a cage with a gorilla. In real life he used his stuntman skills when he heroically saved a hot air balloon, which had broken free of its moorings, injuring his arm in the process. William would likely be called on to perform gymnastic work, but stuntmen could also be asked to step in to do the dangerous scenes for more valuable actors. The very first film in which a stuntman performed is debatable but was probably around 1903. It was only 20 years later in the 1923 film “Safety Last” starring Harold Lloyd, that stunts were thought through and planned before being performed. Here a series of safety features were employed to minimize the harm actors would come to if their stunt went wrong. The Lancaster Guardian article explains that although he is 55, William is keen to get back to his stuntman work and believes he could perform well, but his age and arm injury would count against him.
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