Watch: Secrets of Leeds Queens Hotel revealed including hidden tunnel

Yorkshire Evening Post

The latest edition of Leeds The and Today takes you on a tour of the Queens Hotel in the city centre. It features a hidden tunnel leading to a secret beach as well as other interesting discoveries.

Transcript

00:00Hi and welcome to the latest edition of Leeds Then and Today with me Andrew Hutchinson.

00:05I'm going to take you inside for a special tour of the Leeds City Centre landmark, the Queen's Hotel.

00:12The original Queen's Hotel, which opened as a Midland Railway Hotel, opened in 1863.

00:20It was demolished in 1935 with a view to build this wonderful building and opened its doors

00:27the 12th of November 1937. We've had a number of celebrity guests, quite a few recent Prime

00:32Ministers have stayed, royalty we've had in the past, Nelson Mandela. Some of my favourite stories,

00:39historic photos of this room. My favourite in particular is when Princess Grace of Monaco and

00:44Prince Albert of Monaco in 1972, I'm led to believe, attended the High Society Ball. We've got a

00:50beautiful shot of David Niven. Hollywood comes to Leeds, David Niven and Cary Grant again outside the

00:56ballroom as they're attending a charity function. Paul just tell us where we are. We're actually in

01:00the motor room, so the motors, the original motors that you see down here are part of the original

01:06motors that opened the hotel in 1937 and to this same day are still in operation now. Where we are

01:13now is the ice bath. You'll feel natural airflow, which comes off river air, comes through the car park.

01:20This area here was full of ice. The natural air would hit the ice and it would circulate all the way

01:24through the eighth floor of the hotel and give us circulation air. And keep everybody cool. And keep

01:29everybody cool. There's a real pungent foisty smell in here. Just explain where we are. We're really into

01:36the barrels of this building. We're in underneath City Square. When the hotel was full of chandeliers,

01:42this is an area that we bring the chandeliers down and we clean the chandeliers back in the 1930s.

01:47This room under the Leeds Rail Station is where the rail station used to store all the rail tracks.

01:54We're just following Paul down here, down a secret tunnel to what we're hoping is a secret beach,

02:00so come follow me. This is quite amazing, an absolute hidden world. Here we are visiting the

02:08Queen's Hotel and here we are right in the bowels. We've got the river air and the sound of the water.

02:13We've got the trains rumbling above. It really, really is a special, special place.

02:18So Paul, this is not the penthouse suite, is it? It's not indeed. Again, we're a lower basement

02:23level, so this is what we believe is a World War II bomb shelter. The red door lifts that we can see

02:30are part of the original 1937 opening. They're synonymous with the Queen's Hotel. Even now, on

02:36more showrooms, people recognise that they're in the Queen's because of the red door lifts. Paul,

02:41we're here somewhere quite special where not everybody gets to see. Just explain more. We're

02:46on the roof of the Queen's Hotel in Leeds. We've gone all eight floors of bedrooms and we're still

02:52on the roof of this majestic building that has been here since 1937 and stood proudly in City Square

03:00since all that time. And we're not alone. We're not alone indeed, so part of our sustainability journey,

03:05we've actually got beehives here on the roof of the hotel. We have our own beekeeper. He comes on a

03:11regular basis and we make our own, or they make their own honey. So welcome to the Queen's new

03:16presidential suite. This is our top four suite, as you can see, with a balcony area that's got

03:22fantastic views across the city. Historically, this used to be the Lord Mayor suite. And then in 2011,

03:27we turned this into the executive lounge. But with the refurbishment in 2021, this then became our

03:36newest suite. Tell us about where we're currently at. So welcome to Cinnamon Kitchen Leeds. Cinnamon

03:41Kitchen Leeds opened in May just this year. So it's brand new to the hotel and brand new to the city.

03:48Chef Vivek Singh, an award-winning chef, was looking somewhere in the north for his first Northern

03:53Outpost, and chose the Queen's Hotel for its natural historic links to the rail station,

03:58and its beautiful setting. This historically has been quite a few things. It was the Piano Bar

04:06quite a few years ago. It was the Howard restaurant, or Harewood restaurant, depending on how you want to

04:10call it, back in sort of the early 80s. And then it was the Queen's Bar, but it feels right to combine

04:18it with a restaurant and bar area. So tell me about John Charles and the link to the hotel.

04:23So where we are now, it's the John Charles suite, which this used to be a restaurant prior to one

04:29of the refurbishments. But John Charles, the history and the links with the Queen's and John

04:35Charles is that on his return back from Juventus, when he re-signed for Leeds United Football Club,

04:40his contract was signed here at the Queen's Hotel. And we've named this suite, the John Charles suite,

04:45after the legend of a man that he is himself. Absolutely. What does the future lie?

04:50Well, we're under new ownership. So when the hotel invested £16 million in 2021,

04:59which was great, and it relifted the hotel, and repositioned the hotel, which was needed.

05:06And we fell under new ownership. We've got new owners called Pandox, and we've got a management

05:10company called Axiom Hospitality. And they want to take this hotel to even greater heights. There's a

05:15pride when you work at this hotel. There's a pride in what it means to the city. The historic stories

05:22um, and the people that work here, we allow people to create their memories.

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