FOR more than a century, guests have been checking in and out of Bradford's Midland Hotel.

Since it opened in 1890, as one of the architectural gems of Victorian Bradford, the hotel has welcomed people from around the world, including business leaders, celebrities and politicians, from Laurel and Hardy to Winston Churchill.

This month is the Midland Hotel's 125th anniversary and a year of celebrations is planned. Former employees are urged to share their memories of their time there, and they will be invited to a special event at the end of the year.

"We believe the hotel opened in June. The railway companies owned hotels back then, having had them built them next to their stations," said general manager Gary Peacock. "We have some information about the early days, but there are whole decades of the hotel that we know very little about. We have a bit on the First World War years, but the 1920s are quite vague, and we have nothing on the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s.

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"We'd like to know more about its history, and this is where former members of staff come in. They worked here, some for a long time, and will have memories about the place, the guests and events that took place. We'd like them to come forward with memories, photos and any other memorabilia. We're planning to hold a Christmas lunch for former employees, so they can share stories."

The station took around five years to build, leading to the kind of transition that contemporary Bradfordians, now used to building sites and demolition, are familiar with.

A report in the Illustrated Weekly Telegraph said: "Bradfordians will remember the row of shops, inns, warehouses, little and big which formed the inartistic fringe of one side of Cheapside and lower Kirkgate. These of course have long since been demolished and the refuse carted away while many thousands of tons of earth and rock have been excavated and drained in preparation for what is one of the finest improvements in the whole range of local railway enterprise. Those who remember the locality in the old days and contrast it with the structure which now stands on the same site cannot avoid being struck with the remarkable results which architectural and engineering ingenuity and financial resources have achieved."

According to the newspaper, the new Midland Station and Hotel "must now take rank among the leading railway centres in the Kingdom".

As with many Victorian hotels, the Midland came hand-in-hand with a railway station. The new Midland Station, now Forster Square station, opened in March, 1890. Work had begun on the hotel in 1885 and when it finally opened, three months after the station, it was a showpiece for the Midland Railway Company's northern operations.

The Bradford Daily Telegraph described its grand design: "The entrance hall is lined with white Sicilian marble, and a tessellated pavement. The staircase is of white marble, and the walls here as well as in the main corridors are lined with white marble slabs. Each of the main rooms is panelled in a different style - the coffee room in oak, the reading room in mahogany, the smoke room in polished walnut, and so on - the only exception being the restaurant, which is most artistically fitted with Burmantoft tiles."

In June, 1890 the newspaper published the new hotel's menus, which included dinner, a la carte luncheons and "afternoon teas for the ladies".

Shortly after the Midland opened, Sir Henry Irving, regarded as the greatest actor of the Victorian age, gave a recital of Macbeth at St George’s Hall with leading Shakespearan actress Ellen Terry. Fifteen years later, the Midland was the backdrop to Henry Irving’s final scene.

On Friday, October 13, 1905, the actor collapsed at the foot of the hotel stairs on his return from the Theatre Royal where he was starring in Tennyson’s Becket. Despite attempts to revive him, he died of heart failure. His last words on stage were “Into Thy hands, O Lord! Into Thy Hands.”

The new hotel, with its ornate stone carvings and grand interiors, was popular with the rich and famous visiting what was then one of the country's wealthiest cities, 'Worstedopolis'.

Among the guests over the years were Laurel and Hardy, the Beatles, Sean Connery, George Formby, Bram Stoker, JB Priestley, John Le Mesurier, and a series of Prime Ministers, including William Churchill and Harold Wilson. More recently those checking in have included actors Tom Courtney, Brian Cox, Michael Palin, Jean Simmons and Michael Brandon, and pop acts the Human League and Belinda Carlisle.

"I was starstruck meeting Jean Simmons," smiles Gary. "We had all the big acts who appeared at the Gaumont in the 1960s, and when the Monty Python movie The Meaning of Life was filmed at Saltaire all the Pythons stayed here.

"We've always had good relations with the Bradford Film Festival; their Lifetime Achievement award-winners usually stayed here, we were one of the venues for this year's Bradford Literature Festival, and we have Alhambra panto stars here each year."

The Midland has played its own role in TV dramas such as Kay Mellor's The Syndicate and The Royal, and factual programmes including Great British Railway Journeys and Long Lost Families.

The hotel has not been without its own dramas too. On August 10, 1894, two members of staff were found dead beneath the dinner lift in the basement pantry. The bizarre deaths were never solved, and to this day remain a mystery.

In 1976 the hotel closed, with the T&A citing factors including the Exchange (now Interchange) station and former Norfolk Gardens hotel hitting trade. A £2 million refurbishment in the 1980s transformed it into an elegant venue with four-star service, but it later fell into neglect, a casualty of the Crown Hotels group collapse. In 1992 the delapidated building - "home to vagrants and pigeons", the T&A reported - was bought by Bradford businessman John Pennington, who threw himself into a major restoration, re-creating the opulence of the hotel's golden era. In 1998 the Midland was sold it to Peel Hotels, which owns it today.

Last year chairman Robert Peel pledged to upgrade the historic 90-room hotel to a four star venue. He said that during the year, capital spending had increased by £100,000 to £519,000, mainly on refurbishing bedrooms at the Midland and other venues.

The Midland is well placed to benefit from the Westfield shopping centre. Gary Peacock is optimistic that it will generate more footfall for the hotel. "It's somewhere people can treat themselves to lunch or afternoon tea. I'd like a footman on the door again; people appreciate that old-fashioned charm," he says.

* Any former employees with photographs or memorabilia are asked to contact Gary Peacock at the Midland Hotel, Forster Square, Bradford, BD1 4HU.