Westlands and Moota hotels up for auction

Last updated 19:42, Thursday, 08 May 2008

TWO WEST Cumbrian hotels are going under the hammer next week.

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Workington’s Westlands Hotel and the Moota Country Motel are up for auction in Leeds next Thursday, with a guide price of £250,000-plus each.

The Westlands, on Branthwaite Road, has been closed since December 2005.

Its drinks licence had failed to be renewed. Manager David Sale blamed inefficient bureaucracy at Allerdale council but the authority said the forms were incorrectly filled in.

He took over the 80-room hotel in September 2004, after it had been savaged in a TV documentary. It underwent an £70,000 facelift in 2005.

It was previously owned by Pietro Matra-Grano and in 2001, Adrian Hope opened Cumbria’s first table dancing club, Cabaret of Angels, in the former Forum nightclub next door. It closed shortly after.

The Westlands was opened in 1972 and was once the most luxurious hotels in the area.

The Queen visited in 1972.

The Moota motel stands within about 100 yards of the perimeter of the Lake District National Park.

The landmark hotel was a popular weekly dancing venue for many people growing up in West Cumbria but went into receivership in August 2004 and remains vacant.

In 2005, both properties were bought by Manchester firm Viewfresh.

The company had plans to demolish the buildings and replace them with caravan parks.

The company’s local agent, Eric Telford, said at the time that both hotels would require a lot of work so the decision was made to look at alternative uses.

In 2006, Mr Telford said Viewfresh had sold the motel and he’d had nothing to do with it for months.

That same year, the Moota hotel was boarded up to deter vandals.

It was not known who owned it at that stage and it took police months to track down the owner so they could board up the insecure building.