The Battery has been transformed from a run-down icon into thirteen state-of-the-art apartments which will be available as holiday lets later this year. Interested parties should get in touch. To discuss opportunities further please contact Ian on 07713 479 303.
No detail has been overlooked in the restoration work, with many original features brought back to life, including the magnificent staircase. Work has been taking place for five years now, as some of you may have seen when walking past.
We are offering the top 3 floors comprising of 8 apartments for rental (4 remaining) with the 5 apartments on the ground floor as holiday apartments available later this year.
The top floor apartments have outdoor balconies with fabulous views across The Bay, and all of the apartments at the front and West side of the building enjoy lovely sea views.
ITV have visited twice and are making a fifth series of The Bay; they are interested in an apartment for DI Manning! What this space.
Tell YOUR Story
The restoration work on The Battery is very much about celebrating Morecambe’s past and bringing the physical aspect of the building back to life, making it fit for a new chapter.
As part of this, we would love to hear your stories and memories of The Battery. If you have a story to tell (it can be anonymous), please submit it via the link below and we will create a section for them.
At risk of stating the obvious, please don’t submit anything offensive as it will not be published. The idea is to share happy memories.
The Battery Hotel, named after a gun Battery that was situated nearby and practised firing into the bay. See old map / picture. The Battery has a unique location with views along the promenade and across the bay to the lake district.
Thwaites purchased the original Battery Inn, the white building and had the main sandstone building constructed around 1900. It operated as The Battery Hotel, with pub and later Harveys nightclub before falling on hard times and closing in the early 2000’s.
Thwaites had a feasibility study completed by local architects that suggested four possible uses for the site, all involved full demolition of the existing buildings. Originally going to be a basic conversion to flats, work commenced back in 2015 and should now be completed later this year. Issues with lock down, other projects, re-siting the mobile phone mast have delayed work. The cost of the restoration and development has trebled to nearly £2m with the development offering luxury accommodation including:-
- Underfloor heating, Air source heat pumps and Karndean flooring with seven kilometres of underfloor heating pipework.
- Mechanical ventilation heat recovery to provide a constant flow of clean Morecambe Bay air with recycled heat.
- Two kilometres of plaster cornicing refitted, some copied from the few remaining examples.
- Solar panels installed into the new slate roof.
- Ten tonnes of new steelwork installed to create two unique penthouse apartments with balconies.
- Fifty thousand pounds worth of new cut stone sourced to restore the building and repointed in lime mortar matched to the original colour.
- Two thousand man hours to restore the oak staircase and original walnut front doors.
- Top end kitchens, designer bathrooms and exposed brickwork to add a modern twist.
- All timber from the site has been restored and recycled where possible including stair restoration, skirting, architraves, window panelling etc.
- The building is super insulated, with the inside of external walls having 150mm of solid foil back and spray-foam insulation to provide near Passivhaus standards.
The building now known as The Battery once marked the boundary between Morecambe and Heysham until 1928 when the two municipal districts merged.
In the nineteenth century the site was occupied by an old mill and the area was later used as a firing range, with an artillery battery stationed there because of fear of an invasion by the French. The mill, then known as The Roundhouse, was used for storing ammunition.
The Battery Inn was built in 1863 and in 1900 it expanded into a larger building next door, when it became The Battery Hotel. It was later acquired by Thwaites Brewery.
Both of these buildings remain today.
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, Morecambe prospered as a busy seaside resort. Around the corner from The Battery Hotel was The Palace Theatre, one of many Morecambe theatres at that time, used for shows and as cinema, until it closed and was later demolished in 1989. Along the promenade in front of The Battery were laid out gardens, The West End Gardens, complete with a bandstand.
Across the road there was a bus terminus, where the doctors’ surgery now stands.
As the tourist industry declined, with holidaymakers seeking cheaper package holidays abroad, so did the fortunes of Morecambe.
The Battery Hotel ceased to take guests but was still a public house until the 1980’s when it then became the popular Harvey’s Night Club throughout two decades.
The building was later used as a gym and fitness club. In 2014, it was bought by local business man Ian Bond to be converted into luxury apartments in order to put Morecambe back on the map as high quality tourist destination.