At the opening of the Llandudno Grand
on 3rd July 1902, adverts in the press are full of the news that the hotel was built, decorated and furnished by “Warings”. This apparent use of a well-known name to promote the opening of the hotel had me intrigued and I looked into who these builders were. I began by putting the phrase “Warings Builders History” into a search engine. The results of this search seemed to offer what I thought was a red herring, until I looked more closely. I, like many others have heard of Waring and Gillow as a furniture manufacturer and when lists of histories of this business came up, I initially dismissed them, but when I looked, it seems that Warings were for a time part of a building company called Waring-White. Crucially, their brief foray into the building trade was at the right time. So the Llandudno Grand Hotel had a well-known and prestigious builder and furnisher and their name was used to attract in customers. What they couldn’t have known was that Warings-White would go on to build several other important buildings. In 1906, they built the Ritz Hotel on Piccadilly in London; in 1909 they built the flagship Selfridges Store on Oxford Street, and also the Cotton Exchange in Liverpool.
The Warings furniture company was founded by John Waring when he moved his family from Belfast in Northern Ireland to Liverpool in 1835. On John’s retirement the company was taken over by his son Samuel James Waring. Under the directorship of Samuel the company expanded, taking in smaller cabinet making firms in the local area, and also won several commissions to fit out ships. In turn his son, Samuel James Waring jnr became a partner in the firm and it expanded more to open a branch in the neighbouring city of Manchester. The company now took on prestigious work including supplying furniture to some of the area’s important country houses. Samuel jnr married Eleanor Caroline Bamford in 1890. She came from a wealthy family who had connections in the Cheshire and Denbighshire (a North Wales county) areas. Not long after the marriage, Samuel jnr was able to open a furniture showroom on Oxford Street, London. It was from this showroom that the company began to supply furniture to hotels and eventually from this to ocean liners and private yachts. At this stage, Samuel jnr could count royalty amongst his customers, when in 1898; he fitted out yachts for the future Edward VII and his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. During the company’s time in London, they absorbed other furniture making businesses and finally merged with Gillow and Company to form Waring and Gillow.
According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the firm Waring-White is not created until 1904, which is after the Llandudno Grand was opened, but it is possible that this was a first foray into building for Warings and its success spurred them on to form the partnership with Whites. J G Whites was an American firm of engineers, who employed time saving methods in their construction work. They were amongst the pioneers of steel framing in construction and the partnership was able to build the first and biggest steel framed buildings in London. The speed and efficiency of the building methods meant that the company was able to complete a great many large contracts. It was Warings-White who built the Liverpool Cotton Exchange and was applauded for completing the project in sixteen months, a full two months ahead of schedule. In economic terms, the quicker a building could be built and opened the better for business and so this technology was of huge importance at the time. The steel frame method of constructing these large buildings was hailed as a revolution.
Samuel James Waring snr died in Llandudno in 1907, the same year that Samuel jnr started to encounter difficulties in the business. Samuel jnr was poised to enter into a department store project with Gordon Selfridge, but had to concede that he couldn’t afford to stay involved due to high rents and so Mr. Selfridge went on to open his Oxford Street store under just his own name and not as they had planned, as Waring and Selfridge Ltd. Waring-Whites still built the store for him, however.
At the time of his death in 1940, Samuel James Waring jnr had received a knighthood as well as being made a Baron. In his many obituaries he is referred to as The Right Honorable Samuel James Baron Waring.
And so it seems, the Llandudno Grand Hotel was the beginning of the building career of Warings and the catalyst for the partnership with Whites. So it follows that it was the reason why steel framing was used as a means of construction by them from then on. Although I have no evidence that the Llandudno Grand has a steel frame, it could have been the frustratingly slow build that prompted Samuel to look for a better method of building large structures like the hotels and municipal buildings he went onto construct after this.