Star Hotel, Great Yarmouth

In 1848 Charles Dickens visited and stayed in Great Yarmouth while gathering material for his book David Copperfield and many of the town's buildings have their place in the book including the Star, which becomes the Inn where David and Steerforth stayed.

In 1819, the Star Tavern was the Yarmouth terminus for the royal mail coach, which left for London every day at 2:00 pm. By 1845, the tavern was also the terminus for mail for Birmingham, and a coach left for Leicester at 4:40 pm.

In the 1920s the Star Tavern was owned and run by the Bayfield family. It was now known as the Star Hotel. In October 1930 The Star Hotel was put up for sale by the Bayfields. The building was sold for £1850.00 to the Postmaster General, to be demolished to make way for an extension to the telephone exchange which occupied the adjacent building to the South. Part of the buildings interior was sold by auction before the demolition of the building. The panelling and ceiling of one of the rooms, which was known as the Nelson room, were bought and removed and shipped to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York where they may be seen to this day.[6]

Admiral Horatio Nelson often stayed in the Star Hotel[7] and the room that he always had reserved for him became known as the Nelson room. It is the elaborately fixtures and fittings of this room which are now an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.[7]

Following the demolition of this first hotel the Bayfields purchased the building next door. This building, called Stone House had also been built by a wealth merchant by the name of Anthony Ellys in 1764[5] on the site of a much older house. The Star Hotel's license was transferred to the new premise thus continuing the name.[5] This new property also had many outstanding features such as rooms with fitted panels similar to the already described room's interior sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since 1881 Stone House had also been a hotel and was called the Cromwell Temperance Hotel. At the time of its sale in 1930[5] it had been owned by Mr Frank Woolsey. In 1946 further expansion to the hotel took place. Some cottages which stood to the rear of the hotel were acquired and became part of the hotel complex. The business, now called The Star Hotel Great Yarmouth (1930) Ltd was renamed the New Star Hotel.[5] In 1946 the ownership changed hands again and now became part of Norfolk and Suffolk Hotels Ltd.[5] In 1949 the cottages at the rear were demolished and the hotel was extended and improved. Once again the hotel was sold to Truman Hanbury Buxton and Co Ltd.[5] In 2001 the hotel was taken over by Queens Moat Hotels Ltd and was refurbished and became part of the Elizabeth Hotel group.[5] Unfortunately in 2009 the Elizabeth Hotel group went into administration. This led to the hotel being taken over by Brazile Ltd. Since 2010 the Hotel has been owned by Geraldine Thornton.[5]

On 16 December 2015 it materialised the hotel had indeed closed and was in the process of being boarded up having been closed since Sunday.[8]