UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS: Joe Shute reports on life in an historic hotel..

BELOW the chandeliers and past the plush carpets of Harrogate’s Majestic Hotel, there lies another world.

An underground labyrinth of rooms and corridors, hidden from the public and unbeknown to the guests above.

The huge basement floor was built to accommodate the army of staff and servants that the building required when it opened in 1900 as “The Finest Spa Hotel in the World”.

And it remains one of just a handful of examples of its kind in the north, with many more modern buildings accommodating staff on the same floors as guests.

Today, visitors to the Majestic are somewhat less demanding than the likes of Prince Henry of Prussia and the Maharaja of Patiala who stayed during the early 20th century when Harrogate was the prime visitor destination for royal families and noblemen and women from across the globe.

But in the beating heart of the hotel, things remain as busy as ever.

“In most modern hotels you have back of house areas, here a whole lot can be going on and people have no knowledge of it at all,” general manager Vince Johnson says while unfurling a map of the original plans of the underground floor from 1898.

The map shows his office is now situated in a former servant’s room, a place his predecessors would perhaps not have graced very often.

Elsewhere, steward’s and servant’s rooms, gentlemen’s dressing rooms and the beer cellar have been converted into the staff canteen, a communications room monitoring the hotel’s switchboards and broadband network, paint stores and wash up areas.

The wine cellar, a large room in the centre of the labyrinth remains unchanged from its original purpose, as does the pastry, boiler house (the hotel still runs hot water through the original pipes fitted as part a steam heating system) and the grand old toilets.

The kitchen too is where it has always been, though the clatter of copper pots and pans has now been replaced by food prepared by a team of 10-chefs and ferried up to the dining room by waiters via an escalator.

“In the past you could have just sealed off this place and life would have carried on as normal,” Mr Johnson said.

“Our staff back then was an army of people from bellboys to butchers, florists, bakers and specialist pastry chefs

“Everything was made here and I suppose it was a little world in itself.

“We had 221 rooms when we first opened and the visitors that used to come here would also travel with an entourage of staff of all sorts of disciplines.

“Back then it was pretty simple, you either had servants or you were a servant. The size of the underground floor was needed to provide the level of service that these people required.

“I don’t think people had any idea of the work it required in the early days.

“Now there is a much better appreciation of what it takes to deliver what your customers expect.

“But the wonderful thing about this building is people only have a certain idea. There is still a bit of a magic about what happens down here – a whole lot can be going on and people upstairs will have no idea about it all. That adds to the experience and that is something I would never want to change.”

The Majestic now has 170 rooms and around 100 staff. But the workers still employ the secret shortcuts used by their predecessors over a century ago to move quickly around the hotel in order to do their jobs.

No more so than over the past year, as staff have worked tirelessly to bring the iconic building back on to its feet after a devastating fire on May 5, 2010 that swept through the upper floors, gutting dozens of rooms and claiming the life of employee Nigel Butterfield. During the blaze, 20 per cent of the building was destroyed, causing the hotel to shut for just the third time in its 111-year history.

Following extensive renovation work, it officially re-opened last month (aug).

“We need the extra access because the hotel is vast and we need the shortcuts to appear on the other side of the building,” Mr Johnson said.

“It never seems eerie down here, there is always a lot of staff moving about 24 hours a day. In a way it is a protected area where we can relax.

The Majestic is one of Harrogate’s most iconic buildings and towers over the skyline as a landmark symbol of its spa town heritage. Yet despite its grandeur, this sense of history feels no more poignant than when underneath it all, walking through the cool corridors with their century-old bare brickwork.

It is for this reason as much as anything, that what keeps the Majestic moving is going to remain underground.

“There are layers of history down here with these old bricks and tiles,” Mr Johnson said. And we would not change that for anything. “If it was good enough for the Maharajas and the old royal families of Europe then it is still good enough for us today.”