Belle-vue Hotel Dunbar

Belle-vue Hotel, February 2006
� Lisa Jarvis

The Belle-vue Hotel was located in Dunbar, on a cliff-top overlooking the North Sea coast. The hotel was opened in the late 1890s, and considered to be one of the more luxurious in the area, offering sumptuous state rooms, more than 50 guest rooms, and with superb views out to sea.

The building's construction was numerically intriguing, with 365 windows to reflect the days in the year, 52 bedrooms for the weeks in the year, 12 public rooms for the months of the year, 7 bathrooms for the days of the week, and 4 floors for the seasons.

The Dunbar Hotel was devastated by fire in 1989, and was finally demolished in February 2006, following years of arguments about the future of the remains. Although historic building preservation campaigners claimed the demolition of the hotel remains was a lost opportunity, the planning committee for East Lothian Council said it had been trying to find an alternative us for the building remains for almost two decades, but that no-one had been able to come up with any realistic plans, restoration costs were prohibitive, and that the gutted remains were becoming an eyesore.

The site of the former hotel was cleared to allow the development of a complex of retirement homes, occupying the land between the Edinburgh to Newcastle rail line, and the main road into Dunbar.