St Pancras Renaissance Hotel

Today's the day .................... for luxury accommodation

Looking more like a cathedral, this is the ceiling of the entrance hall of the place we are staying in tonight.  As you might imagine, the rest of it is on a pretty grand scale too.

On the 5th May 1873, George Gilbert Scott, one of the greatest architects of the Victorian age, saw the opening of what was perhaps his most ambitious and extravagant creation: The Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras London, built and equipped at huge expense and set to raise the standards of London's hotel scene.  Little more than 60 years later, on the 19th April 1935, it closed, deemed to be 'completely out of date and obsolete'.  Fifty years of use as railway offices followed until, in the mid 1980s, it was refused a fire certificate.  For the next two decades, the imposing neo-Gothic masterpiece stood empty and untouched.

Few could have predicted its brilliant come-back spurred on by the spectacular renovation of St Pancras station.  Magnificently restored, St Pancras' great iron and glass shed is once again recognised as one of the wonders of London, a model of regeneration and renewal.  In the spring of 2011, the former Midland Grand reopened its doors as the 5-star St Pancras Renaissance Hotel London.

And for one night - and one night only - we are in Room 031 ...................