Bob Cunningham still possesses a photograph
of the huge "Brigade Culinaire", taken in 1933, which shows a strictly ordered
society, with M. Favage fixed firmly in the centre. It had not changed much when Jackie
Monteith started as an apprentice making today's tartare sauce from yesterday's mayonnaise
and wearing a borrowed white coat because he couldn't afford to buy one out of his week's
wage of 7s 6d. He thought he would not stay longer than the first week. "I had never
heard so much shouting". But the excitement of the place grew on him, he discovered a
leaning for the work, he enjoyed the artistry involved in creating fantasy. Most of all he
liked the camaraderie and bustle in the kitchen. "It was busy, busy - like King's
Cross Station".
What all the staff remember with pride is the
training provided by the North British, a legacy from the old railway company which was to
be handed on by the nationalised transport hotel group. Head waiters, chefs and managers
have pursued careers across the world on the strength of a North British training. Helga
de Bordes, now returned to Austria, kept notes from her 1933 training course at the hotel,
which instructed staff in the art of recognising different types of patrons. The social
order is set out thus: "(a) business man, (b) business woman, (c) Old people, (d)
children. (e) irritable person, (f) guest who tries to be too personal, (g) timid person,
(h) leisure class type".
The links with the railway were severed in the
early 1980s - not a happy decade for the hotel as its ownership changed rapidly in an
extended game of company take-overs. The start of the 1990s, however, brought again the
prospect of a settled future under the ownership of a company with a similar vision of the
hotel and its place to that created by its founders at the start of the century.
Balmoral International Hotels, a new company
based in Edinburgh, bought the North British with the intention of making is a flagship
for an international hotel group with luxury hotels in strategic cities in the United
Kingdom, Europe and North America. It is an ambition of which the directors of the North
British Railway Company would have approved.
History has an off way of repeating itself. The
New Edinburgh Balmoral has a style and appearance very close to the spirit of the building
which took its triumphant place on the Edinburgh skyline as the century began - indeed it
deliberately evokes the Edwardian era which has become a symbol of timeless comfort and
security the world over: tea may be taken in the Palm Court whatever is happening in the
real world outside. Very deeply rooted in local history the Edinburgh Balmoral will
compete with the best hotels anywhere in the world just as George Wieland intended when he
led the "Waverley Station Hotel Committee" on a grand tour across Europe all
those years ago. The name may have changed but the sense of identity has turned full
circle.
Return
to the Balmoral Index Page |
