THE TONTINE
The Georgian Tontine Hotel
As early as 1772 the Directors of the Staffs and Worcs Canal Company took a decision to have their headquarters and Commercial Hotel at Stourport. It was to be built overlooking the River Severn. It opened in 1788 and remains to this day the most impressive Georgian building in the town.
The original name was The Stourport Inn, Tontine Buildings, the name given to the whole of the buildings. It was later called the Areley Inn and then, The Tontine Hotel.
The Tontine Hotel at Stourport was the Canal Company at its elegant best, a place with space for 100 beds and a ballroom. A place where the Directors, the Committee and principal shareholders met to conduct the business of the enterprise. After the business of the day was concluded, the hotel became a scene of revelry. The meals put on were massive, by any standards, the choicest fish, the most expensive cuts of meat, venison and all sorts of game and pastries etc. were eaten. All this washed down with the finest wines and spirits brought up the river from Bristol.
This highly desirable situation only lasted while large dividends were being paid and it all ended with the coming of the railway to Stourport in 1862. By 1880 the canal and river trade was in sharp decline and the Tontine itself had undergone a change. John Randall in his book The Severn Valley writes
"We found the Company’s great commercial hotel, the Tontine, a large square block, with rooms sufficient to make up 100 beds, and equally extensive stabling, diminished to proportions of one of the smallest inns in the town, its extensive rooms let off to form dwelling houses."
Information provided by Geoff Neal (a renowned local historian)
Summer would see the terraced gardens bustling with visitors taking advantage of the beautiful riverside location .
The gardens can be seen to the left in front of the old canal company cottages with the broad barge locks, linking the basin to the river, to the right.
