Royal Hotel, Birmingham

[1] Notable guests who stayed at the hotel included Louis XVIII of France,[2] Lord Nelson,[2] the Duke of Gloucester and Queen Victoria.

[1] As well as accommodation for visitors, the hotel included assembly rooms that formed Birmingham's main meeting place for polite social gatherings during the later part of the Midlands Enlightenment.

[4] In response to this slight a group of influential local figures met at Widow Aston's Coffee House in Cherry Street in 1770 and resolved to raise £4,000 to build a hotel worthy of the town's reputation.

[5] The principal events of the social season at the hotel during its early years were its Subscription Dancing Assemblies, and series of concerts held by Jeremiah Clark and the Birmingham Dilettanti Musical Society.

[6] On 14 July 1791 the hotel was the venue for the dinner to celebrate the storming of the Bastille that was to lead to the Priestley Riots,[2] and on 14 December 1829 it was the site of the founding of Thomas Attwood's Birmingham Political Union.