HOLBECK: 25YEARSON

Twenty-five years ago next week Scarborough make headlines across the globe. On Thursday, June 3 1993, the staff and guests at the Holbeck Hall - and the rest of Scarborough - were blissfully unaware that the historic hotel would be at the centre of a major event that would put the town on the world map.

By the Saturday, Scarborough was mobbed by the nation’s media as part of the town’s only four-star hotel began to fall over the cliff.

Dog walkers had noticed cracks and bulges in land surrounding the hotel on the Thursday morning and alerted the Scarborough Evening News, whose Landslip edition on the Friday sold out within hours.

The first of three more major slips occurred, taking with it most of the gardens and causing cracks in the hotel walls.

Residents waking up opened their curtains to find that the rose garden and most of the front lawn had dropped over the cliff.

Eighty staff and guests got out, leaving behind many belongings. Some guests had to be rescued from their rooms after doors became stuck because of the movement from the landslip. Others were reluctant to go. When all the guests were out, staff began to remove valuable items from the hotel.

Speaking to the Evening News on the 10th anniversary of the disaster, Joan Turner, owner of the Holbeck Hall Hotel, recalled the despair. She said: “I still remember the shock. It was our first hotel and was very special to us and to Scarborough.

“I didn’t realise just how many other people loved the hotel until we received over 400 letters and cards from people saying how sad they were at what had happened.”

Mr and Mrs Turner bought the Holbeck Hall in 1979 and it became the first in their English Rose chain of hotels, which later included the Royal, run by themselves and sons, David and Mark.

Her husband, Barry, died in 2003, aged 66, three months before the 10th anniversary of the disaster.

Mrs Turner, who died in 2013 at 77, recalled the day she heard what had happened.

She said: “The manager called early in the morning

‘I still remember the shock. It was our first hotel and was very special to us’

and said he had evacuated all the guests because the garden had disappeared and cracks were appearing in walls. We couldn’t believe it and rushed round to see for ourselves. It was awful. As soon as I saw it I knew we wouldn’t trade again. We rescued what we could but resigned ourselves to losing so much. The real blessing of the whole disaster was that no-one was hurt.”

The Evening News editor at the time Neil Speight produced a Sunday edition, with the deputy editor and now current editor Ed Asquith then creating a front and back page news wraparound with a giant aerial image of the dramatic scene.

Next week: More on the Holbeck drama, 25 years on