Durban - The old picture today shows the Tudor House Hotel at 197 Dr Pixley KaSeme (West) Street, which is still trading as a hotel today. It is next to the SARS building in the city centre. Today it boasts 44 rooms, all with en-suite bathrooms, LCD TV, air-conditioning and free wifi.
The hotel boasts of it’s excellent hospitality at reasonable rates, as well as its accessibility to all parts of the city.
The old picture was published in the Daily News on February 13, 1976. The caption reads: “With monogrammed downpipes and a rampant lion on the central gable, the Tudor House in West Street looks like a transplant from an English country town. The appearance at street level belittles the style above the canopy.” Apart from the strange use of language, it gives little clue as to the purpose of the story.
Throughout it’s history, the hotel has always been a popular entertainment spot, and maybe here the Daily News was looking at events that might have taken place on February 14 that year.
In an article headed “Watering holes of my youth” for Facts About Durban, David Baird remembers: “Opposite the new Metro cinema complex was the Tudor House Hotel. If we were going to watch a movie, we would often pop in for a beer. Nothing to write home about, but it was in there that I drank my one and only bottle of Stallion 54 lager. Eugh,” he writes.
However, on the website Durban Down Memory Lane, many remember it as a watering hole of note and as a popular place for office workers to pop in for a lunchtime meal and a pint.
Glenn Wilson remembers going there to play darts every Saturday night before going to the movies. “But we never got to see the movies. I hustled so much on the board, we drank free all night,” he writes.
John Simmonds remembers its legendary curry and rice. “Back in the 60s we had many fine curries there. It was 20c for the curry, 15c for the beer. Good stuff,” he recalls.
There is little information on the history of the hotel. Barbara Kuhn remembers it belonged to her great aunt and uncle back in the early 1900s. “I think he built it,” she wrote. Others remember it being owned by a Mr Wykerd, who also owned the Stamford Hill Hotel in the 1950s, and another by Solly Solamon, the brother of Sid James the actor, in the mid sixties.
The Tudor House Hotel should also not be confused with the Tudor Rose Chinese restaurant, which was also situated in a Tudor-style building on the corner of Sylvester Ntuli (Russell) and Maud Mafusi (St George’s) Streets at the top end of town.
As our photographer Shelley Kjonstad’s pictures today show, the hotel is all spruced up and still providing accommodation to travellers to Durban.