The Ben Nevis Hotel and Observatory: Luxury Living on Britain's Highest Mountain.
If you had climbed to the top of Ben Nevis in, say, 1900, you would have been able to refresh yourself at a hotel on the summit, before descending back to sea level. You would not have been able to find Dutch Courage for the descent with a stiff drink as there was no alcohol for sale. On the other hand, you could have booked one of four rooms for the night, with dinner served and breakfast too the following morning.
Adjoining the hotel was the Weather Observatory, a building that was manned day and night throughout the year. You could inspect it, and there were telegraph facilities in place from 1884. The Observatory was proposed by David Milne Home, Chairman of the Council of the Scottish meteorology Society. It was opened on 17th October, 1883 by Mrs Cameron Campbell of Monzie, the owner of the estate in which Ben Nevis was situated. It was a cold ceremony, with a stiff breeze blowing and snow on the ground to a depth of two feet. Remarkably, whilst the Observatory was in the planning stages, Clement Wragge, a meteorologist, climbed the mountain every day from June to October, 1881. He took readings at the top which were then compared to data collected by his wife at the bottom.
Various instruments were installed (see the engraving from the Illustrated London News, 1881), including a Stevenson Screen designed by Thomas Stevenson, Robert Louis's father. The walls of the station were granite blocks of between 5 and 12 feet thickness, and in 1884 a 30-foot tower was added to enable the men to exit the building if snow was blocking the downstairs door. The men, some of them volunteers, would take hourly readings night and day.
The Hotel was built by Robert Whyte, the proprietor of the Imperial Hotel in Fort William. By the late 1800s, thousands of people were climbing the mountain every year. It took only ten days to construct, and it opened on the 7th July, 1885 - another chilly ceremony witnessed by 17 gentlemen. The hotel thrived until the First World War, when it was forced to close in 1916.
One of the most remarkable achievements on Ben Nevis was its ascent by a Model T Ford motorcar in May 1911. All for the sake of advertising, Henry Alexander Junior took 5 days to ascend, and 3 hours to descend the mountain. Prior to that, the company had spent 6 weeks laying a timber track to make the ascent possible. The event was repeated 100 years later, in 2011, but this time the car was dismantled and re-assembled at the top! The 1911 triumph is pictured on a Macintyre series postcard below.
