Report - The Waterloo Hotel, Cape Hill. September 2012 Tile Porn NSFW!

[dweeb]

Reccie with OT and explored today with Speed.

Cape Hill was once home to the mighty Birmingham brewers Mitchells and Butlers. Pretty much in the shadow of the former brewery stands this imposing Edwardian public house.

Today Cape Hill is a fetted hole if ever I have seen one. The alley next to the pub looks and smells like something from the third world. However we ventured down it and this is what we found...

CURRENTLY CLOSED. Built as a flagship pub-hotel in 1907 for Mitchells & Butlers whose brewery was nearby. Their architects, Wood & Kendrick, whom they often employed, provided a lavish Edwardian Baroque front for the corner site - M&B terracotta survives on the fascia and high gables. The astonishing features of the interior of this pub is the tilework. It covers the walls of the public bar - and even the ceiling. There are bands of green, blue, cream and salmon with highly decorative Victorian motifs and descending wreaths. The counter and bar back are excellent, original work. If you look at the floor pattern closely you can see how there was once a partition across the middle of the bar. You can also work out how there was a screened-off outdoor area on the left. Behind the bar, a central lobby with service via a hatch-counter has a staircase and fully-tiled walls and ceilings in same style as the bar; off this is a modernised lounge.

But the really spectacular room is the Grill Room in the basement: this was (and still is) a restaurant and features walls and ceilings extravagantly tiled with a frieze of galleons. On one side is the original servery and on the other a cast-iron grill - this superb Edwardian survivor is still fired up and used to cook the grills. The pub also doubled as a commercial hotel and at the top of the stairs you will find a small cubicle that was used by a night-watchman.

One of, if not the best derelict public house I have had the pleasure of seeing. Now the public bar is nice, real nice. Tiled walls, ceiling and terretzo floor, and lined with carved wood and decorated mirrors. But the real gem is in the basement. Descend the tile lined staircase and you are greeted by a room lined floor to ceiling with lavishly decorated Minton tilework. This is Edwardian splendor at it's finest. Still in situ is the wooden marble topped counter from which chops would have been served, stood in front of a huge tiled iron range. Your food would have been cooked in front of you in a style not dis-similar to modern day sushi bars and pizza express etc.

The entire picture rail level is decorated with ships and clouds, and further down tiles depicting lobsters, birds and fish are dotted about. Much of the acid etched and stained glass also survives.

Upstairs on the landing the old night porter's cabin still survives, and seems to have once been fitted with a small bar! Climbing out of the roof we were able to get a good view of the building's wind vein, topped with a huge metal galleon.

The sad thing is the theft of a couple of hundred quids worth of lead has left the building's roof pretty much useless and the water damage is taking it's toll rapidly. I hope that the building has a future, but in Cape Hill, I am not so sure.