Whitley Bay, Promenade, Rex Hotel (Waverley Hotel)

HER Number:
9307

District:
N Tyneside

Site Name:
Whitley Bay, Promenade, Rex Hotel (Waverley Hotel)

Place:
Whitley Bay

Map Sheet:
NZ37SE

Class:
Commercial

Site Type: Broad:

Site Type: Specific:
Hotel

General Period:
Modern

Specific Period:
C20

Form of Evidence:
Extant Building

Description:
Seventy-bedroom hotel on The Promenade. Once home to a popular folk club. A host of well known musicians played here in the early days of their careers, including Gerry Rafferty, Billy Connolly, Ralph McTell and Lindisfarne, who 'came home' for the club's 1970 Christmas party following the release of their first album, "Nicely Out of Tune". The hotel had quite small beginnings. In December 1906 the Waverley Hotel Company submitted a planning application for a temperence hotel. It was one of a chain, the others being located in Barrow, Whitehaven and Penrith. Over the next ten years, the Waverley Hotel swallowed up the neighbouring houses on the Promenade and vacant land on South Parade. A 1920s pamphlet described the Waverley as one of the largest and most up-to-date private residential hotels on the North East coast. It then had 150 bedrooms and a heated garage. Behind there was a private tennis court. In 1937 the hotel obtained a license to sell alcohol for the first time and about the same time changed its name to the Rex Hotel. LOCAL LIST

Easting:
3577

Northing:
7235

Grid Reference:
NZ35777235

Lats/Lons:

Sources:
North Tyneside Council, Draft Local List Nominations, 2006; North Tyneside Council, November 2008, Register of Buildings and Parks of Special Local Architectural and Historic Interest SDP (Local Development Document 9)