Dream hotel begins with bit of a nightmare

The sound is worse than a bad dream for the new owner of Windermere's Hydro Hotel.

He admits he's paranoid.

Ironically, the 96-bedroomed edifice owes its rich history to water.

This is where Victorian folk with brass liked to bathe in the Turkish, Russian and "electro-magnetic" options on offer.

The giant baths are long gone.

In their place, a tacky tongued and grooved boarded conference room.

No trace of those evocative times of wicker bathchairs, genteel gentry and potted palms remain.

We find the cause of the noise.

More than a drip, less than a deluge, it is making a most unwelcome visit to the dining room, via a lovely, moulded ceiling.

Ken's first week at the helm and already the place is teeming with builders.

The roof has been leaking for too long and is a priority.

There are many priorities.

Ken is not fazed.

He first found the classic Grade II listed building as a Blackpool Catering College student and went on to spend every weekend and holiday toiling around the cavernous corridors.

From cutting cabbage - when he removed the tip of his finger - to portering, to waiting on, to reception, he did it all, and loved it.

After graduating, he came back as assistant manager.

"There was something about the place," mused Ken.

"It was privately-owned, staff stayed for ever, they smiled, were happy, it rubbed off.

The atmosphere was very special."

A career beckoned, and the ambitious surgeon's son knew he had to move on, knowing one day he would have something of his own.

There were a few moves, Norfolk, then back to the Lakes.

For the last 14-years Ken and his Irish wife Rose ran the Salutation Inn, at Threlkeld.

Before that, it was the George Hotel, Keswick.

"I was sailing on Windermere in the summer when I got a mysterious phone call asking if I wanted to buy a hotel.

It was top secret, the place was not even on the market."

It turned out to be the Hydro.

But when he walked back into the once majestic foyer that had captured his heart, he could not believe his eyes.

The vast Victorian building was not how Ken remembered it.

Time had taken its toll.

"I thought here is a wonderful chance to do something.

"At the end of X Files there's this line: 'I made this'.

We are going to bring the Hydro back to life."

"We" includes wife Rose and sister Kathryn Tomlinson.

The three are partners in the newly formed Lake Hotels Limited.

They bought the classic Victorian and Italian style hotel for an undisclosed figure and have mammoth plans involving big time spending.

Reducing the number of bedrooms to 80, £10,000 will be spent on each ensuite unit.

The roof is going to cost around a quarter of a million.

And that's just the start.

"The place deserves, needs it," says Ken.

We walk down seemingly miles of corridors, blighted by bad paint jobs at best, rotting, crumbling walls at worst.

When the Windermere Hydropathic Establishment opened its doors in 1881, guests were greeted by a feast of extravagant opulence.

The Westmorland Gazette reported how for £25,000 the fine house above Lake Windermere had been turned into "one of the best equipped hydropathic establishments in the kingdom".

Northern newspapers of the day waxed lyrically about the place.

"Picturesque beyond the power of words to describe," proclaimed the Lakes Chronicle.

Visitors were allowed to pass "with the greatest privacy" from bedrooms to the baths.

The Turkish option offered relief from rheumatic and gouty afflictions.

It removed "deleterious matter from the blood," stimulated appetite and renovated the system.

More worrying were the electric and electro-magnetic treatments.

Electricity through water powerfully affects the nervous system, explained brochures.

It was "particularly suited" to treatment of nervous diseases.

No-one seems to know when the water cures ceased and the building became a hotel.

The Great War seemed to have killed off many similar establishments.

During the next war, it was used by Harrogate boys' school Ashville College.

Ken Burchill is determined to haul his Hydro back into the spotlight.

"Just watch this space," he grins.

"We will be back with the best."