Old Swan Hotel, Swan Rd, Harrogate HG1 2SR, United Kingdom
The Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, has existed since at least 1777. Originally, the hotel was called the "Swan Inn".
At the end of the nineteenth century, it was completely rebuilt into a fashionable spa hotel and included Turkish baths. It was the first building in Harrogate to have electric lighting. In 1943, it was attacked by enemy aircraft, but only the house at the end of Swan Road near Ripon Road was destroyed.
A detective story is associated with the hotel.
In December 1926, British and American newspapers wrote about the mysterious disappearance of the writer Agatha Christie. It was known that the detective novelist had quarreled with her husband after his infidelity, left her children with the housekeeper, and drove off late at night in her car in an unknown direction. The next day, her car was found with its headlights on in a neighboring county. Investigators and journalists put forward many theories about the incident: that Agatha was killed by her husband, kidnapped, or had decided to take her own life.
The police only got a lead on the eleventh day of the search: musicians performing at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel (today — The Old Swan Hotel) noticed a woman resembling Christie. Agatha’s husband, together with investigators, went to the given address and found his wife in the hotel lobby playing billiards. All this time she had been living at the resort under the name of her husband’s mistress, attending spa treatments, the library, and evening concerts. The writer said she had lost her memory and did not remember how she ended up at the hotel, located five hours from London. Despite this, several newspapers with articles about her disappearance were found in her room.
From the revolving doors to the famous Wedgwood restaurant with its glass ceiling, the hotel radiates romance and mystery. It was at the "Old Swan" that Agatha Christie famously disappeared in 1926, causing a public sensation for 11 days while she was missing.
The story goes that at the end of 1926, Agatha’s husband Archie confessed he was in love with another woman, Nancy Neele, and wanted a divorce. On December 3, 1926, the couple quarreled, and Archie Christie left their home, Styles, in Sunningdale, Berkshire, to spend the weekend with his mistress in Godalming, Surrey. That same evening, Agatha disappeared. Around 9:45 p.m., without warning, she left the house after going upstairs to kiss her sleeping daughter Rosalind. The abandoned Morris Cowley car was later found on a slope at Newlands Corner near Guildford. She was nowhere to be seen, and the only clue was a letter to her secretary stating she was going to Yorkshire. Her disappearance caused public outrage, many of whom were fans of Agatha Christie’s novels. Despite an extensive search campaign, there were no results at all!
Rumors circulated that the then Home Secretary William Joynson-Hicks pressured the police to make faster progress. Even famous crime writers Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of "Sherlock Holmes," and Dorothy L. Sayers, author of the "Lord Peter Wimsey" series, were drawn into the puzzle. Conan Doyle, interested in the occult, took a glove discarded by Christie to a medium, while Sayers visited the disappearance site and later used it in her novel "Unnatural Death."
Eleven days after her disappearance, Christie was identified as a guest at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel (as the Old Swan was then called) in Harrogate, where she was registered (strangely!) as "Mrs. Teresa Neele" from Cape Town.
Christie gave no explanation for her disappearance. Although two doctors diagnosed her with amnesia, opinions about the reasons for her disappearance remain divided. One theory is that she suffered a nervous breakdown caused by a natural tendency to depression, worsened by the death of her mother earlier that year and the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. Public reaction at the time was mostly negative: many believed it was just a publicity stunt, while others speculated she was trying to make the police think her husband had killed her in revenge for his affair.
Whatever the reasons, it is interesting to imagine what other guests thought of the woman dining alone in the Wedgwood restaurant, unaware that they were sharing the room with one of the best-selling authors of all time.
A film about this event titled "Agatha" was made at the hotel in 1979.
Sources:
https://www.classiclodges.co.uk/the-old-swan/agatha-christie/
