Guest Room

A guest room on the upper floor of the Terminus Hotel sits with its furniture still arranged: a single iron-framed bed against one wall, a small chest of drawers opposite, a wooden chair beside the bed. The bedding has been pulled back but not removed. A pair of slippers sits on the floor beside the bed. A jacket hangs on the back of the door. The walls are wallpapered in a faded floral print, the wallpaper joins separating at the corners. A single sash window admits the southern light from the John Street side. The pendant light fitting hangs from a pressed-metal ceiling rose, the bulb still in place but no longer connected to power.

This was one of the upstairs accommodation rooms at the Terminus, used by long-term guests and casual workers across the working life of the pub. The personal effects in the photograph are not staged. The room reads as someone walked out and never came back. The Terminus closed in 1983 when the McElwaine family ended its tenure; the upstairs rooms were emptied or partially emptied in the years that followed. This room was one of those that retained most of its furniture and incidental detail. Brett photographed it in 2016, two years before the 2018 restoration reopened the building.