The Holbeck Hall Hotel was a clifftop hotel in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England, owned by the Turner family. It was built in 1879 by George Alderson Smith as a private residence, and was later converted to a hotel.[1]
| Holbeck Hall Hotel | |
|---|---|
 The site of the Holbeck Hall Hotel | |
 | |
| Former names | Roosevelt Hotel |
| General information | |
| Type |
|
| Location | Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England |
| Coordinates | 54°16′00″N 0°23′27″W / 54.26667°N 0.39083°W (grid reference TA0486) |
| Inaugurated | 1879 |
| Destroyed | 5 June 1993 |
| Client | George Alderson Smith |
| Owner | The Turner Family |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 3 |
On 4 June 1993, 55 metres (180 ft) of the 70 metres (230 ft) hotel garden had disappeared from view, the beginning of a landslide[2] which gradually became more severe, and finally on 5 June 1993, after a day of heavy rain, parts of the building collapsed, making news around the world. The hotel's chimney stack collapsed live on television just as Yorkshire TV's Calendar regional news programme went on air covering the building's precarious condition. Richard Whiteley was presenting the item at the time of the collapse.[3] The remainder of the building was demolished for safety reasons. One of the likely contributing causes of the landslide was the substantial rain in the two months before it occurred. The mud flow from the landslide protruded 135 metres (443 ft) beyond the high-water mark.[2]
Landslides are a common problem in Scarborough and along the coast from Filey to Whitby.[4][5]
In 1997, the hotel's collapse became the subject of a significant court case in English civil law (Holbeck Hall Hotel Ltd v Scarborough BC[6]) when the owners of the hotel attempted to sue Scarborough Borough Council for damages, alleging that as owners of the shoreline they had not taken any practical measures at all to prevent the landslip – from soft, to hard engineering, nothing was done. The claim was rejected on the grounds that the Council was not liable for the causes of the slip because it was not reasonably foreseeable. Reasonable foreseeability is a requirement for liability in negligence and nuisance in English and Welsh tort law.[7]
References
edit- ^ Barwick, Sandra (12 June 1993). "Scarborough: postcards from the edge: Once golden sands and donkey rides were the big attraction. Now visitors come to watch the town's only four-star hotel fall into the sea". The Independent. London: INM. ISSN 0951-9467. OCLC 185201487. Retrieved 28 May 2011.
- ^ a b "Holbeck Hall, Scarborough – landslide case study". Retrieved 6 October 2020.
- ^ "Holbeck Hall Hotel collapses on live TV". ITV Yorkshire. 6 June 1998. Archived from the original on 14 December 2021. Retrieved 22 February 2018 – via YouTube.
- ^ "North Yorkshire Coast Landslides – Landslips At Whitby". www.real-whitby.co.uk. Retrieved 6 October 2017.
- ^ "Scarborough 'can't afford' to defend Spa from waves and landslides". The Yorkshire Post. 8 March 2014. Retrieved 6 October 2017.
- ^ [2000] QB 836 (CA).
- ^ "Holbeck Hall Hotel Ltd and another v Scarborough Borough Council". web.uct.ac.za. Archived from the original on 15 July 2012. Retrieved 5 October 2008.