By Jeremy Miles
It’s the hotel that people love to hate and I am certainly no fan of the huge Grand Burstin that dominates the harbour front in Folkestone. I think it’s ugly, badly maintained and a bit of a dump. Yet much as I loathe the place, I have been watching with a growing sense of unease as the repercussions from the terrible fire that ravaged the building earlier this month have unfolded.
The blaze, believed to have been started deliberately, took hold at the massive 550 bed hotel in the early hours of Saturday 19th September, causing devastating damage. Nearly 300 guests, mainly still in their night clothes, were led from the smoke-filled building as emergency services, including the crews of 26 fire engines, battled to control the fire. Thankfully no one was injured but the knock-on impact on the town has been immense.
I know the Grand Burstin and its fascinatingly chequered history well. I was born and grew up in Folkestone and was a young reporter on the local newspaper in the early 1970s when the controversial Polish property mogul Motyl Burstin first unveiled his plans for it. There was an immediate backlash. People hated it and criticisms have continued ever since, though not necessarily for the same reasons.
Predictably news of the fire has brought a welter of social media posts from jokers saying that it would probably improve the place no end. I understand why people might feel that way. I stayed there once (it was a freebie) and it was horrible. I even woke up in Tracey Emin’s bed but that’s another story, more of which later. Suffice to say she hadn’t been in it for a fortnight and at least the sheets had been changed.
More importantly I remember how horrified people were when Burstin’s plans for the massive new brutalist concrete hotel, shaped like a landlocked ocean liner, were first revealed. There was an uproar. People were not only upset by the modernist design but the fact that it was being built on the site of the town’s once grand and beautiful Royal Pavilion Hotel which had been prized for its Victorian elegance. More than half a century later there are fewer and fewer people who have any memories of the Royal Pavilion Hotel or are even aware that it ever existed, but the Grand Burstin continues to divide opinion. Its very presence has long proved a divisive issue and in some ways this awful fire is just the latest chapter in its decidedly controversial history.
The blaze has had a catastrophic effect not just on the building but the whole town. Roads were sealed off for days, major car parks were closed and dozens of nearby residents were evacuated from their homes while structural engineers are deciding whether the Grand Burstin is in imminent risk of collapse. Perhaps the Burstin haters, hoping that it will be pulled down, should think carefully. The simple fact is that even though it has been dubbed one of the worst hotels in the country, many people love the place. It brings thousands of visitors to Folkestone offering budget travellers and low income families cheap accommodation. All those people spend money in the town. Now because of the fire many businesses that rely on them are without customers.
A prohibition order was imposed on the entire area and, at the time of writing, neither the rescued guests nor dozens of local residents forced from their homes have been allowed back to collect belongings or clothes. Meanwhile cars, which normally parked in the habour area, were cluttering every available parking space across the town. I was visiting Folkestone that weekend and it was chaos.
It is interesting to remember the origins of The Grand Burstin and the man who brought it to Folkestone and named it after himself. It’s a remarkable story. At the start of World War II a young Polish merchant seaman, the 17-year old Motyl Burstin, arrived in England and spent a night at the old Royal Pavilion Hotel. He would stay on in the country as a refugee while the already well-past-its-prime Royal Pavilion was requisitioned as a naval base and military mortuary. It was eventually left abandoned and war-damaged.
Maybe Burstin never forgot his stay there, because after the war he began buying and redevloping bomb-damaged and abandoned buildings and in 1955 returned to Folkestone to buy the, by then, dilapidated Royal Pavilion. Whether he had already hatched a plan isn’t clear, but rather than attempting to renovate the old hotel, Burstin set about converting parts of the property into residential flatlets for the elderly. Then as the old Royal Pavilion building deteriorated into what local council records called “a slum” the main section was torn down.
By the time Burstin’s radical long term aim to construct his cruise ship inspired mega hotel was finally made public, he was ready for the outcry. Many local residents were appalled, dismissing the design as that of a monolithic eyesore that dominated the harbour front and was completely at odds with the historic character of the town. Others, however, saw Burstin’s plans as a forward-thinking modern replacement for the crumbling old Royal Pavilion Hotel. Eventually it was the pro-Burstin argument that won the day and with influential local figures sensing a way to economic regeneration, his plans were approved.
Construction began in 1974 which was when, as a reporter on the Folkestone Herald, I first encountered the, by then, multi-millionaire businessman. Motyl Burstin was a charismatic and driven figure, skilled in complex negotiations and well equipped to woo potential backers. His initial move to provide accommodation for the old and needy had been applauded but later, as the older parts of the building continued to deteriorate, there was much criticism. I remember doing interviews with worried residents who were complaining about the damp and inadequate conditions. Strangely the one I remember best was a conversation I never had with a woman who wasn’t there. I pitched up at her flat to find a note, handwritten and roughly scrawled in capital letters, pinned to her front door. It read ‘JUST POPED OUT FOR A MINUET’. Many decades later members of my family still frequently announce and they’re just ‘poping out for a minuet’.
Most of the actual stories we ran in the paper though. were about Burstin’s grandiose and, as it turned out, largely unrealistic ambitions. He was convinced that Folkestone Harbour could become a massive ultra-modern transit tourism hub, the major link to the continent with a state of the art conference centre able to accomodate 30,000 delegates, and even an inner harbour helicopter base. But while some saw him as a visionary others dismissed his schemes as pie in the sky. In fact, apart from the hotel itself, few of his plans came to be realised.
The first phase of the building was opened in 1975 under the name The Motel Burstin. Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, the remaining Victorian structures were progressively cleared, and the now familar white-concrete “ship prow” silhouette was completed.
Ironically, although he didn’t realise it at the time, Motyl Burstin who had based his entire business model on independent travellers and cross-Channel ferry traffic had missed the boat. The construction and subsequent 1994 opening of the Channel Tunnel changed everything.The Grand Burstin had to radically diversify, and fast. Its focus soon shifted to the low-cost domestic coach holiday market and organised group entertainment breaks.
The hotel underwent a number of changes in ownership in the late 80s and 90s before being acquired in 2004 by its current owners, Britannia Hotels, a company notorious for being ranked the worst hotel chain in the UK. It was during this era, in 2008, that I found myself staying there for a couple of nights and discovered it was just as awful as people had said. I had been offered a free room during a press trip to write about Folkestone’s first Arts Triennial. The room which had been flagged up as being for VIPs and visiting media was grubby and very basic. It’s one considerable saving grace was its top floor location offering spectacular views of the harbour and the coastal sweep to the White Cliffs of Dover.
I had also been told that the artist Tracey Emin, one of the inaugural Triennial’s key exhibitors, had recently occupied the self-same space. At the time she was still notorious for her famously scuzzy unmade bed. So thanks to the Burstin, I left the hotel bemoaning its grimy, poorly maintained faciities and awful food but in possession of a perfect eye-catching opening sentence for my susequent article which started with the words “I woke up in Tracey Emin’s bed last week….”:
Over the years, the Grand Burstin has become a favourite target for people moaning about Folkestone. Social media has been a regular source of jibes, jokes, and criticisms. But this week following the fire, the tide has been turning a little. For every keyboard cynic who has suggested that the blaze was not an altogether bad thing, there have been many pointing out that thousands of people enjoy staying there each year and how disastrous the current situation is for the town’s economy. I completely agree with them. Horrible it may be, but for the foreseeable future Folkestone will struggle to do without it.