THE story goes that cinema cowboy Tom Mix rode his horse through the foyer, Laurel and Hardy stayed there, an Empress said a tearful goodbye, Charlie Chaplin booked in for the night, and Winston Churchill and General Eisenhower are thought to have held secret wartime meetings in the building.

Built in the 19th century, Southampton’s South Western House was designed to be the most opulent hotel ever in the South East of England.

Opened in 1866 and first called The Imperial it contained 100 suites and was immediately a hit with Southampton society, becoming the centre for much of the local social life. The Grade II-listed building, which has stood firm through some of the momentous events in Southampton’s past, was acquired by the London and South Western Railway Company five years later.

Liveried footmen and porters in red uniforms would meet and greet passengers from trains which arrived on the railway platforms just outside the hotel’s main entrance.

It was in South Western House that Empress Eugenie watched from the window of the ladies drawing room and saw her son wave his last farewell as he left for the Zulu War. It was to the hotel that local people also used to turn whenever they wanted to check the accuracy of their watches as in the early part of this century a “time ball” was fitted to a mast on the roof of the building. At exactly noon every day the large five-foot black ball would be dropped down the mast so that ships in the docks and the Solent could verify their chronometers.

At one time the hotel’s register read like a who’s who of the rich and the famous who arrived and departed on the many ocean-going liners during Southampton’s hey-day of trans-Atlantic travel.

The South Western Hotel is where most of the first class passengers stayed before embarking on the Titanic. Three of the most famous guests to stay overnight before embarking on the ill-fated Titanic in 1912 were Joseph Bruce Ismay, White Star Line’s managing director, Thomas Andrews, the liner’s designer, and the Countess of Rothes.

In 1925, a stone-clad, eight-storey extension was added to the hotel to provide a further 100 bedrooms to meet the heavy demand.

There are still many people living in and around Southampton who recall have memories of attending dinners and dances amid the lavish surroundings of the landmark hotel.

The outbreak of the Second World War signalled the end of the building as a hotel and the premises were taken over by the Royal Navy and became HMS Shrapnel until September 1946.

In more recent years the building provided offices for British Railways and then later on for Cunard and studios for the BBC before being turned into a number of luxury apartments and becoming known as South Western House.