Court Stairs Hotel

Above photo, date unknown.

Above postcard, date unknown.

Above map, date unknown showing location of hotel in red, bottom left.

Same map close-up.

Above map, date unknown, showing hotel position in red, bottom left.

Above advert 1955.

From the C. S. Lewis as shown below from the excerpts of C. S. Lewis Collected Letters Volume III by Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950-1963, edited by Walter Hooper.

BERNERS-PRICE, Nell (1906-98)

Was born Nellie Devonald Lewis at 84 High Street, Harlesden, London, on 13 October 1906, the daughter of Arthur Devonald Lewis and his wife Susan Amy (Wheeler) Lewis. She was educated at Croydon High School.

On 7 April 1934 Nell married Alan Maxwell Berners-Price (1903-89) in Beddington Church, Surrey. Alan was an auctioneer and antiques dealer whose particular interest was in china and pictures. During tin Second World War he served as a wing commander with the Royal An Force, while Nell taught at Collingwood School, Wallington, Surrey They had two children, Peter Devonald, born in Byfleet, Surrey, on 27 January 1943, and Penelope Devonald Maxwell, born in Queen Charlotte’s Hospital, London, on 6 February 1945.

In 1946 the family moved to Thanet, on the coast of Kent, where Nell and Alan opened a country house hotel, Courtstairs. This imposing mansion, built as a private house in 1883, is set in grounds facing south and sheltered by massive evergreen oaks. The magnificent entrance hall is 20 feet high with a gallery running round it. Alan was still working as an art dealer, and Courtstairs provided the backdrop for many grand pictures. They made it a splendid and successful hotel.

Nell first met Lewis in 1952 after a woman claiming to be ‘Mrs C. S. Lewis’ came to stay at Courtstairs, saying her husband would soon be joining her. Eventually she ran up a very large account, always with the promise that her husband would pay. In April 1952, after Mrs C. S. Lewis had been at Courtstairs for almost a year, Nell Berners-Price took the unpaid bills to Oxford, intending to confront Lewis with them. She was as surprised to find Lewis was unmarried as he was to learn he had a ‘wife’.

It transpired that the woman posing as Lewis’s wife was a Mrs Nella Victoria Hooker, who had been in jail a number of times for similar offences. She was arrested, and from her jail cell she wrote to Lewis every day. The story of Mrs Hooker appeared under the title ‘70 Year Old Charged’ in The Kent Herald (20 May 1952), p. 3. In the course of Mrs Hooker’s trial at Canterbury, at which he was required to give testimony, Lewis stayed at Courtstairs, and this was the beginning of a close friendship with the Berners-Price family. Lewis gave their daughter, Penelope, copies of the Narnian stories as they were published. Lewis liked the family so much that, during his wife’s long stay in hospital, Nell invited David and Douglas Gresham to stay with them. In 1969 Nell and Alan gave up Courtstairs and retired to Chipperfield, Hertfordshire. Alan died on 30 April 1989 and Nell on 5 February 1998.

Penelope Berners-Price, a wine correspondent, accompanied her mother on a number of visits to Oxford for tea with Lewis. She was educated at Leeland’s Preparatory School, St George’s School, Ascot, and St Clare’s International College, Oxford. In 1968 she joined Conde Nast Publications, and started the Wine and Food section in House & Garden magazine. In 1975 she married Marshall Angus Avery and moved to Scotland where she wrote as a wine correspondent for various publications. The Averys had two sons, Archie Maxwell (b. 1 July 1977) and Alexander Marshall Devonald (b. 24 April 1982). Angus Avery died on 2 February 2006. Penelope now lives in Chesham, Buckinghamshire.