The Holiday Inn Chester, formerly Chester Post House
When I wrote about Stoke on Trent I thought about all the other beautiful places in the UK that I worked in my “Hotel” days. After I completed my role as an Executive Trainee with THf hotels I was very proud to be appointed as “Assistant Manager ( Personnel and Training) at what was then Chester Post House Hotel.
Neil Porter, Assistant Manager ( Personnel and Training)
Chester Post House- 1984
The Manager was Frank Harvey who lived in the grounds with his lovely wife Catherine and daughter Lisa. The Deputy was Chris Johnson and we all got on really well. We had some very experienced Head of Departments ( HOD) like Keith Galvin in the Restaurant, with Jose, and in the Kitchen Head Chef Barrie with Sous Chef Stuart, Joyce Goss was Bars supervisor, Janet Thompson was Accountant and Jane Ellis was housekeeper , with Mary as her deputy. I was there from 1983 to 1986 and I still remember all the names like it was yesterday. We had great staff too like Yosser , Hollie, Dawn, the Beautiful Julie Macaulay ( my girlfriend before Janet!) , Yvonne, Jayne and cleaning the rooms were Kate, Karen Waudby ( who I also had a fling with!) , Helen and a naughty little girl I had to sack for stealing! Reception was in the capable hands of Frankie Wallace and Dawn. Christine Cole was in charge of the Banqueting bookings.
Back then
the hotel had 60 rooms and was in a U shape with the bar In the Middle
downstairs looking out on the garden, and the restaurant upstairs looking out
on the Welsh hills. The hotel was in England but very close to the Welsh border.
At the back of the hotel was a field with two horses owned by two female police
Inspectors. One of my friends who worked there before me, when I showed him the draft of this blog said "do not forget to tell them about the Chester map on the wall!" Thanks for reminding me! As you walked down from the Restaurant to the reception there was an amazing map on the wall- like a Mural covering the whole wall.
The Mural on the wall
Long after I
left to join Little Chef in 1986 it became a Holiday Inn and they added a pool
and leisure complex, and built more rooms where the field was to double the
size and make it into a hollow square. They created a lovely garden in the middle.
When I was looking for the photos on line I found some really bad trip advisor reviews from September 2021 - one person complained their room was a 5 minute walk from reception whilst another complained the lift was out of order. When I worked there the hotel did not even have a lift. It bought back nasty memories of complaining customers and the phrase "You can please some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time. But you cannot please all of the people all of the time!" My sympathy to anyone who works in the service Industry.
I loved this!
There was some live-in accommodation on site in what used to be a Petrol station, in addition to the Manager’s house. I rented a room in Chichester Street, near one of the Chef’s Colin Morris. Whilst the hotel was out of town on the Chester ring road, where it crossed the Wrexham road, my room was near the Northgate Arena and within walking distance of the town Centre.
By Photo by Clint Heacock (imported to Wikimedia Commons) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:The_Cross.JPG, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2450295
The city of Chester was surrounded by the city walls ( on which you could walk in places) and had a river ( the Dee) and a racecourse. The buildings were Black and white and there was an area in the shopping part of town called the Rows where there were two stories of shops and restaurants. A lot of the town centre was pedestrianized and it was beautiful to walk around. There was also a beautiful Cathedral.
I met many
wonderful people there back in 1983 and many are still friends to this day and
reading this , some 40 years later. I will not embarrass them by mentioning
their names but they know who they are and my thanks to them for fact checking
my blog and supplying some additional pictures.
Regular
readers of my Blogs will know I always like to give some historical background
so here we go:
Chester was founded as a "castrum" or Roman fort with the name Deva Victrix in the reign of the Emperor Vespasian in 79 AD. One of the main army camps in Roman Britain, Deva later became a major civilian settlement. In 689, King Æthelred of Mercia founded the Minster Church of West Mercia, which later became Chester's first cathedral, and the Angles extended and strengthened the walls to protect the city against the Danes. Chester was one of the last cities in England to fall to the Normans. William the Conqueror ordered the construction of a castle, to dominate the town and the nearby Welsh border. Chester was granted city status in 1541.
Chester is one of the best-preserved walled cities in Britain. It has a number of medieval buildings, but many of the black-and-white buildings within the city centre are Victorian restorations, originating from the Black-and-white Revival movement.[3] Apart from a 100-metre (330 ft) section, the Grade I listed walls are almost complete.[4] The Industrial Revolution brought railways, canals, and new roads to the city, which saw substantial expansion and development – Chester Town Hall and the Grosvenor Museum are examples of Victorian architecture from this period. Tourism, the retail industry, public administration and financial services are important to the modern economy."
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester ( accessed 29.9.21)
Then, to keep Mr. Gregory, Carl and Thang happy, I add my own stories. I always said I should have written a book about my days in the hotel industry but Khalid gets bored if I write too much so I will just give you four of my favourite stories from Chester.
1. We hosted a
lot of weddings and Christine would draw up a function sheet listing the
requirements, and Keith and I ran the events in the restaurant. To our horror
one Saturday we realised the wedding party had ordered a wine we did not have
in stock. I dashed off in a taxi and was delighted to find they stocked it,
rushed it back to the hotel and put the white wine in the ice machine. When the
bridal party was seated Keith went to pour the wine at the top table, and I saw
him turn away form the bride, with a white linen napkin over the bottle. I was
impressed by the theatrical way he removed the cork and poured the wine until
he returned to the bar laughing. I had mistakenly purchased screw cap bottles!
2.At another
wedding I silver served Beef to the top table and the father of the bride
called me over and complained it was not very hot. I apologised and told the
chef who put the next platter under the grill, unbeknown to me. Back then I
wore a mourning suit in the day and placed the platter on a waiter’s cloth on
the mourning suit sleeve and set off to serve the other tables. Slowly the
extreme heat from the red hot platter burnt through the waiters cloth, the
jacket and shirt and my arm causing a huge blister to form. The Chef thought it
was very funny as I ran my pink blistered arm under cold water in the kitchen
and suggested I never complain his food was cold again.
3. We had a
bleep system and one morning when I was helping serve our weekly Frames Rickard
coach tour their breakfast the emergency sound emitted from my waist where the
bleep was housed. I ran down the stairs two at a time, suspecting a fire to be
told the horses had escaped and were heading to the highway behind the hotel as
the rush hour started. “Call the Police and the owners” I shouted and ran up
the road. Ian, the coach driver was outside loading the coach ready to set off
back to London and he asked where I was going, and kindly ran down the road
with me. I was much thinner and fitter back then ( 25 years old- see my photo)
but, in the heat of the moment forgot I was allergic to horses. It was a big
farming area and the oncoming traffic slowed as the two scared horses ran towards
them chased by an Assistant Hotel Manager in a mourning suit and a Frames
Rickard uniformed coach driver. We eventually caught them and with the help of some mints Ian had in
his pocket and a harness one of the drivers in the ensuing traffic jam had in
his car, we led them back to safety. As we arrived at the hotel the Police cars
with flashing lights arrived having gone the wrong way down the A55 and been
unable to get back, and also the owners. In those days there were no mobile
phones to take photos with but the American tourists, who were wondering where
their driver had raced off to , gave us a round of applause as we led the
horses back, just as their owners pulled up!
4. A lot of
people hired cars to explore the area and often left them in our car park to
await collection, with the keys at reception. I was very stupid back then and
immature and Keith and I used to take the cars and race them down the A55 and
back! It nearly ended in disaster as I took a short cut around the roundabout
and went down a one-way road at the hotel the wrong way and did a handbrake
turn into the rear car park seconds before Keith! After that near miss we
sensibly decided not to do it again!
5. Finally Frank and family departed for York Post house, and Janet went with them, and Chris moved up to a new Post house in Hull . Shane Cassidy took over with Eddie O’Rourke as deputy and I ended up working late shift Friday, all day Saturday and Sunday and early shift Monday. One weekend I was bleeped and introduced to the Tour Manager for the group “Spear of Destiny”. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear_of_Destiny_(band)
Chester was the last night
of their tour and they wanted to celebrate after the Gig. They ordered a lot of
Champagne and wine and Keith and I willingly agreed to keep the bar open for
their return ( back in those days I drank alcohol and we needed little
motivation to keep the bar open late!) . They duly returned, with a lot of
fans, and the party took off. As the night wore on I reminded the tour manager
(who had given me his gild American express card) that the non-residents should
leave and only the residents could continue to order alcohol. They ignored me
(the hotel was out of town and there was no way for the pretty 17 yr. old
groupies to get home!)
By maxalbums.com, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26110937
One of the
things that scared me the most as Duty Manager was the fire alarm going off in
the night so when I saw someone light a firework on the carpet at 3 am I jumped
over the bar but could not put it out before it set the alarm off. The fire
brigade and police arrived, the 17-year old’s ran and hid, the band went to bed
(and later their insurance company paid for a new carpet!). the next day I had
to refund some money to the other guests who had their quiet weekend break
interrupted but Shane was very impressed with the record bar takings!!
I hope you
enjoyed my reminiscing about my hotel days and if you are in the UK and have
not visited Chester, you really should!
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Hello, I am The British Kabayan! Feel free to read my stories.
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