North Euston Hotel

Fleetwood is a planned town. Its founder, Sir Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood, owner of the neighbouring Rossall estate, conceived it in 1836 and gave it his name. He meant it to be both a seaside resort and a commercial port, the port also serving people travelling between London and Scotland. He engaged the London architect Decimus Burton to lay out the town and design its main buildings, this hotel among them; Hesketh-Fleetwood commissioned and paid for it, and Burton designed it as the centrepiece of the new town. The name comes from the railway line from London Euston, whose terminus the hotel stood beside. At that time Fleetwood lay on the shortest, fastest route, by rail and then by sea, from London to Glasgow, and many guests were expected between the two cities.

Burton's plan of 1841 shows the hotel complete. The builders were the London firm of Robert and George Webb, whose contract, signed on 30 November 1840, called for completion by 25 March 1841 at a cost of £15,043; the extra work came to £27,053. The hotel opened in 1841.

Until 1847 Fleetwood was the railhead for a steamer service to Ardrossan. A direct rail link to Scotland then opened, and by the early 1850s trade had declined. In 1861 the Government bought the hotel and turned it into Euston Barracks, a School of Musketry; it went back to its original purpose in 1899. It has been listed at Grade II since 26 April 1950, and the Transport Trust unveiled one of its Red Wheel plaques there on 6 May 2019.

The hotel has a crescent plan, shaped to follow the curve of the shore. It is built of sandstone ashlar under a slate roof, hipped over the central block and mansard elsewhere. The central block is three storeys high and the rest two storeys with attics. The centre, seven bays wide, is flat-fronted and projects slightly.

A porte-cochère on columns, with a full entablature and an ornamental cast-iron balustrade, marks the entrance. Two shallow round-headed niches sit on the ground floor on either side of the central block, with two sculpted wreaths above them on the first floor. In 2008 the hotel kept many of its original external features, among them a raised stone terrace with ornamental iron railings.

The view from the hotel carries across the Wyre estuary, beyond which lie Morecambe Bay and the Lake District.

The building is a working hotel, with bedrooms, a restaurant and a bar. Its three function suites, one of them a ballroom, host weddings, christenings, birthdays and other celebrations.

The hotel is open all year, on The Esplanade in Fleetwood (FY7 6BN). You need not be staying to go in: the bar welcomes walkers for a coffee, and a table at the restaurant or the bar can be booked on the hotel's website.