Lowry refers to the hotel in his novel Ultramarine; " ' Talking about cows, all round the West Indies I been, Barbados, Bridgetown, that's hot stuff...All the grape trees coming down to the water's edge, you want to stay at the Colonial in the Milk Market there - nigger orchestra. The Marine's no good - that is, if you got money. I had. That was during the war. I tried the Marine, and the Balmoral. And then I went to the Colonial.....' " (Pg. 174).
The hotel was located on the opposite side of the Hastings Road, near St. Matthias Church in Hastings, Barbados. There is no record whether Lowry visited the hotel on his 1929 trip to the Caribbean en route to the USA to visit Conrad Aiken.
I live in what was once the Baloral Hotel, now Balmoral Apartments.... I stumbled upon this today... Im intrigued....
ReplyDeleteHi Ewan
ReplyDeleteThanks for dropping by - as you can see I've manged to find a photo of what it looked like in the 1930's
Cheers
Colin