... was built around 1930 by Archibald Nettlefold. He was the heir to the GKN engineering company (Guest, Keen and Nettlefold), and had bought a film studio which he renamed Nettlefold Studios. Built in the Art Deco style, the hotel is now Grade II listed.
Archibald Nettlefold had bought Burgh Island in 1927 from a music hall artiste named George Chirgwin, who performed a blackface minstrel act, billed as 'the white–eyed kaffir'. Chirgwin built a prefabricated wooden house on the island, which was used by guests for weekend parties; Nettlefold built the hotel on the site of Chirgwin's prefab.
Wikipedia tells us that "Burgh Island Hotel is linked to the crime novelist Agatha Christie; it inspired the settings for both And Then There Were None and the Hercule Poirot mystery Evil Under the Sun. The Beatles used the hotel when they were playing a concert in Plymouth. Other guests who have reputedly used the hotel include Edward and Mrs Simpson and it is said that Eisenhower and Churchill met there in the weeks leading up to the D-Day invasion."
© Haydn Thompson 2020