The Story of the King’s Head, High Street, Loughborough:
Part 1, the 21st century
 |
| Ramada by Wyndham, 2021 |
The twenty-first century
2021
In February 2021, the news came in that the Ramada by Wyndham, the hotel on Loughborough High Street, had been sold, and planning permission had been submitted for a change of use. This would involve a conversion from an 88 bedroom hotel to student accommodation.
The hotel was most recently franchised by the Wyndham hotel group, a large chain, with around 907 hotels in the group, stretching across the world. Like most of the rest of the hospitality industry, the hotel has been adversely affected by the pandemic of 2020-21, with few visitors traveling away from home, and therefore little need for overnight accommodation.
Local events, too, had been cancelled: lockdowns made such things impossible, and even illegal, and during periods when lockdown was eased, social distancing guidelines made meetings, and events difficult to administer.
In the report
which appeared in the Leicester
Mercury on Tuesday 16th February 2021, it was stated that business for the
Ramada by Wyndham had declined over the past few years, attributed in part to
the university having developed its own hotel, which is used to
accommodate visiting academics, and others, thus no longer having need for a
town centre hotel.
Further, the arrival in town of budget hotel accommodation, like that offered by the very nearby Travel Inn, together with the increase in the number of Airbnb properties in the vicinity also had a negative impact on the hotel, making it increasingly financially unviable.
The hotel as it stands is a real piece of Loughborough’s history. Let’s look at the most recent story of the hotel.
2020
As late as 8th March 2020, a group of women of all ages and ethnicities, from across the
Loughborough area met in one of the hotel’s larger meeting rooms, under the
watchful eye of the Reverend Wendy Dalrymple. The event was a screening of a
video recording made in the parish church of the women of Loughborough singing
a song especially written for International Women’s Day.
 |
| Rehearsal at All Saints with Holy Trinity church |
Under the
baton of choral conductor, Emma Trounson,
in her role as Director of Mission through Music of the church of All Saints
with Holy Trinity in Loughborough, the song was rehearsed, performed and
recorded earlier in the month. As it was due for release to the world via
YouTube, on International Women’s Day, the chosen song was
’Twenty-first-Century Woman’ by Joanna Forbes LeStrange, and had been written
only a year earlier for the same international day. After a short introduction
from the Rector, the assembled party watched the video with a whole range of
emotions!!
 |
| The rector addressing the crowds |
 |
| Further addresses |
Although it
was evening, the large room in which the event was hosted was known to be one of
the ones that had views out onto the bustling Loughborough High Street. The
hotel had kindly allowed the group to bring in their own catering, and the
buffet provided by Heaven on a Plate didn’t disappoint! Following a period of
mingling, the event closed, with everyone agreeing to do something similar, in
2021.
 |
| Cake by Heaven on a Plate |
 |
| Mingling! |
2019
On a very hot
day at the end of July 2019, one of the smaller meeting rooms was the venue for
a book launch event. The hotel and staff were very accommodating and the hosts
were allowed to decorate the room appropriately. Bubbly and cake was served to
the 50+ invited guests who wandered in and out during the tw0-hour event, which
saw the launch of ‘Secret
Loughborough’. Such was the interest from the people of Loughborough and
the surrounding area, that it was hoped to launch a follow-up book in August
2020 – ‘A-Z of
Loughborough’. Sadly, such plans will now no longer come to fruition: while
the publisher has delayed publication until August 2021, the hotel will no
longer be available as a venue.
 |
| Book signing at the Ramada |
 |
| Mingling at a book launch in the Ramada |
2017
The Ramada by
Wyndham seems to have been a popular venue for the holding of book launches, a
earlier one, in the summer of 2017 being the launch of ‘Tales
from Holt Cottage’, a collection of memories collected by a grandmother and
told by a granddaughter, of their and their parent’s time living in Holt
Cottage, which lies just besides what is now known as the Forest Green Belt, an
area surrounding the Wood Brook that has again, in 2021, won a Green
Flag Award.
2015
In December 2015, there was a big splash on the front of the ‘Loughborough Echo’, the local newspaper, announcing that the Ramada had been sold for the sum of £2million. The owners at the time were BV Holdings who operated under the Ramada franchise, and at the time of the sale regular occupancy rates were running at around 35%, compared with rates in the early 2000s, which were around 80%.
2005
BV bought the hotel in July 2005 at a cost of £4million, and allocated a sum of money to “maintain the character and spruce it up a bit” and aimed, amongst other things, to add another dozen bedrooms. It was planned to re-name it from the Ramada Jarvis to the Ramada King’s Head. As a franchise of the Ramada hotel chain, in order to remain a part of it, they also introduced some exacting customer service standards, and expected staff to greet breakfast guests within 60 seconds of them appearing at the restaurant door and lead them to a table; approach them 3 minutes after seated with an offer of drinks; and wish them a ‘nice day’ when they depart the restaurant. At evening meal, staff have just 1 minute to approach diners at their table with the drinks offering. Meanwhile, over in the lounge bar, one simply has to take the drinks order promptly!
2004
In 2004 the building had been added to the Borough Council’s register of Locally Listed Buildings, because of its importance to the town throughout its existence, and particularly to the history of Loughborough in the late 1920s-early 1930s when such was the prosperity of the town that demolition of some of its older buildings was possible, as was the widening of the town centre streets, and the building of new properties more appropriate for the needs of the day. The Ramada, then known as the King’s Head, was one such building that was replaced with a new one, although rather than being built in the avant-garde Art Deco style like many of the town’s other buildings of the 1930s, the King’s Head was built in a neo-Georgian style.
Throughout the twenty-first century, the hotel has been the chosen venue for numerous events in the town, including hosting a recruitment drive in June 2004 for volunteers to help out at Rainbows, the local children’s hospice. Roles included things like gardening, reception and secretarial work, as well as housekeeping, and since the hospice received very little in the way of funding, and most of its services were made available through money taken in fund-raising activities, it was also looking for people to organise fund-raising events.
In the year
2000 itself, the Jarvis King’s Head hotel was the venue for the signing of a
bid for money under the government’s Single Regeneration Budget scheme. The
application, submitted by the Loughborough Outreach Partnerships, if successful
would be used to improve the health, community safety and the environment for
people living in five wards, in underprivileged parts of Loughborough – being
the Ashby, Hastings, Lemyngton, Woodthorpe and Storer wards - and a number of
Charnwood villages – being Mountsorrel, Sileby, Thurmaston, Anstey and Syston.
Almost five years earlier, a consortium of local organisations, led by
Charnwood Borough Council, had been successful in their application for £1.3
million under the same scheme, so there was no reason to be other than hopeful
this time round.
Pop back soon, when we'll go back a bit in the history of the Ramada Hotel, aka the King's Head.
Posted by lynneaboutloughborough 21 February 2021
You are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follow:
Lynne
No comments:
Post a Comment
If you have found this post interesting or have any questions about any of the information in it do please leave a comment below. In order to answer your question, I must publish your query here, and then respond to it here. If your information is private or sensitive, and you don't wish to have it on public display, it might be a better idea to email me using the address which is on the About Me page, using the usual substitutions. Thanks for reading the blog.