Felix William Spiers

Who was Felix William Spiers?

Felix William Spiers was a British restaurateur and hotelier.

Spiers' family originated in Glasgow, Scotland in the very early 18th century. One of the family moved to France, where he dealt in tobacco. Later family members were born in Calais, Dunkerque, Boulogne, France and in England. After his death his wife, Constance Albertine Spiers, donated money to the town of Belle-Ile, an island off Northern France, for a lifeboat which was named after him. His father was Felix Theodore Benjamin Augustus Spiers, born at Calais, in 1797, a ship broker and merchant, agent in London for the General Steam Navigation Company. Felix William sailed to Melbourne, Australia where he was a wine merchant, having acquired a publican's licence in 1857. He set up in business at George Coppin and Gustavus Brooke’s Theatre Royal, Melbourne with George Hennelle, but Hennelle was injured by a falling Post Office wall in 1859 and replaced by Christopher Pond. Together they formed a partnership, Spiers and Pond, running the Café de Paris at the Theatre Royal, later buying the lease of the Café from Coppin and Brooke.

In 1861, they brought to Melbourne the All-England Eleven to play a series of cricket matches. Mementos of the tour are held in the MCC Museum at Lord's Cricket Ground at Marylebone, London. Pond suffered an accident in 1862, and in 1863 they both returned to London, where they were soon running the Holborn Viaduct Hotel at 15 Old Bailey. In 1874 they had built, and owned, the Criterion Theatre and Restaurant in London’s Piccadilly Circus. The partnership became Spiers and Pond in 1882, after the death of Pond in 1881. They owned the London and Westminster Supply Association at New Bridge-street, Blackfriars, which supplied their restaurants, their extensive railway refreshment rooms, their many hotels, and the general public. The company went into liquidation in 1916 and was taken into administration by the court until 1918, when it was reorganised to continue as Spiers and Pond. They owned twelve hotels and a golf course, Bushey Hall. The hotels included, Bailey's Hotel, Gloucester Road, London, The Grand Hotel, Brighton, The Queen’s Hotel, Eastbourne, The Palace Hotel, Hastings, The Victoria Hotel, Manchester, The Grand Hotel, Scarborough, the Royal Clarence Hotel, Exeter, The Bull’s Head Hotel, Aylesbury, & etc.,. The company eventually became a part of Grand Metropolitan Hotels’ portfolio.