The Court Royal was originally built around 1860 as Madeira House, it later became the Madeira Hotel. You will find a blue plaque that tells the fascinating history of this seafront establishment.

A Hotel that broadcasts a rich past

The Court Royal was originally built around 1860 as Madeira House, it later became the Madeira Hotel.

In 1898 Guglielmo Marconi, the Italian inventor and wireless pioneer, conducted his earliest experiments here. Marconi was considered a bit of an unusual character at the time, he theorised that radio signals could travel round the globe.

He built a thirty metre wooden mast in the grounds of the hotel and set up a wireless station there. In February 1898 the elderly and gravely ill Prime Minister William Gladstone was staying at the Royal Bath Hotel. His health took a turn for the worse and reporters, eager to send their stories to London, found that an overnight snowstorm had brought down telegraph wires so there was no way to send their copy.

Marconi and his mast came to the rescue. He transmitted their stories to his receiver on the Isle of Wight. They were forwarded from there. Marconi’s experiment had worked.

On the 3rd June the renowned physicist and engineer Lord Kelvin paid one shilling to send a message to Marconi’s Madeira Hotel mast making it the first commercial radio transmission.

Miner respite

In 1910 the hotel was extended and renamed Court Royal and later, in 1947, it was taken over as a convalescent home for Welsh Miners. Now former mineworkers and their families can stay at ‘not for profit’ rates. Situated in a fine seafront position, walk round to the garden gate to find the miner’s lamp motif.

How to get here

The postcode of this site is: BH2 5EB 

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