Star and Garter Hotel, Richmond

This was followed by several other buildings of increasing size and varied design as the site changed from family ownership to being run by a limited company.

In the period from the 1830s to the 1890s, the hotel guests ranged from literary figures such as Charles Dickens to exiled crowned heads of Europe such as King Louis-Philippe and his wife.

Following the end of the Victorian era, the rise of the motor car and more widespread travel led to a decline in the hotel's fortunes, and it failed twice to be sold at auction.

During World War I it was purchased by the Auctioneers and Estate Agents Institute and donated to Queen Mary in 1916 in support of her plans to establish a home for paralysed and permanently disabled soldiers.

During the 18th century Richmond and its surroundings were mostly still countryside and parkland with several villas and estates along the River Thames, together with scattered villages and towns.

The land, initially only enough for the building of a small inn in 1738, was leased from the Earl by a John Christopher (died 1758).

In the early 19th century, the establishment went through three owners starting with a Richard Brewer who leased more land from the Earl of Dysart in 1803.

However, Brewer's management and expansion of the hotel left him over-extended financially and he was declared bankrupt and died in a debtors' prison in 1808.

He and his wife and his friend and biographer John Forster spent the day there on the Sunday in March 1838 when the first installments of Nicholas Nickleby were to be published.

The hotel was said to be a "favourite resort" of Dickens, and he would meet friends there, or recover there after strenuous bouts of writing.

[3] Other dinners and meetings, held by societies and private individuals, took place at the hotel during the period of the Ellis family ownership, with some of them being reported in The Times, the leading newspaper of the day.

The stay at the hotel was several months long while the water pipes at Claremont were replaced, and the group consisted of 88 people occupying between 50 and 60 apartments.

[7][8] The presence of these "illustrious exiles" in the area led to a visit in 1850 by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

One of the stays reported by The Times concerned the 1859 visit to see Marie Amelie by a group that included Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Alexandrine of Baden, Duchess of Saxe Coburg Gotha, the Duchess of Cambridge and the Princess Mary[10] Queen Victoria and Albert would also visit a few days later.

The fire and accounts of the dramatic rescue of one of the three people in the hotel at the time, was reported in the newspapers of the day as far afield as Australia.

[32] More funds were raised in 1893 at a public dinner for "Princess May's Ward for Children", presided over by the Duke of Cambridge.,[33][34] with another banquet in November the same year.

[42] Politicians would also gather to dine at the hotel, with many Tory grandees and MPs attending a dinner in 1888 in honour of Sir John Whittaker Ellis MP.

Billiards.Following the end of the Victorian era, and the rise of the motor car and more widespread travel, the hotel went into decline.

[53] It also continued to host charitable events such as the 1906 annual meeting for the National Society for the Protection of Young Girls, attended by Princess Louise and the Duke of Argyll,[54] and was still known as a place to dine at; in George Bernard Shaw's 1906 play The Doctor's Dilemma it features as the venue of a dinner held by a fashionable physician to celebrate his knighthood, and it was similarly noted by the author A. E. W. Mason, who conceived of the detective Hanaud and the novel At the Villa Rose after dining at the hotel in 1905.

[1] During the war the hotel and its land was purchased with funds raised from a public appeal by the Auctioneers and Estate Agents Institute, with the freehold being valued at around £25,000.

The site was then donated to Queen Mary in support of her plans to establish a home for paralysed and permanently disabled soldiers.