White Swan Hotel, Alnwick

Olympic Suite Restaurant
Dining in the White Swan's Olympic Suite Restaurant was a great experience. The photos on this page were taken on 10th April 2012. The meal commemorated 100 years since the maiden voyage of the Titanic.

The Olympic Suite Restaurant has the original panelling, mirrors, ceiling and stained glass salvaged from RMS Olympic, the Titanic’s sister ship at an auction in Jarrow in 1936.

The hotel's then-owner, Algenon Smart, had been a frequent traveller on Olympic and took part in the auction of the ship's fittings in November 1935. At the auction, which was run by the London firm Knight Frank & Rutley, he had the winning bids for elements of the First Class Lounge, the Aft First Class Staircase, and the revolving door from the liner's restaurant.

The lounge was described at the time as "a magnificent salon, pronounced by many persons as the finest room ever built into a ship. It is more suggestive of a state apartment in a palace than a room on shipboard."

The room was decorated in the Louis XV style based on interiors at the Palace of Versailles. The walls were panelled with finest English oak carved with delicate boiseries decorated with scrolled floral-and-shell ornamentation, rather than the gilding that would have been seen in the French originals. At one end of the lounge was a non-functional grey marble fireplace with a carved mantelpiece and a curb of a pierced scroll-and-shell pattern, measuring 5 ft 6 in (1.68 m) wide in total.