Royal On Ninety-Nine

The Royal Hotel in Roma has enjoyed a chequered history, with several lives loss through fire and misadventure. In 1870, fire threatened Cook’s Royal Hotel, and only a year later despite extra precautions extinguishing candles, the pine building was destroyed by fire. By 1903 the Australian handbooknoted the town had twelve hotels including the Royal. The hotel was rebuilt by 1910 as a two-storey building described by the press as ‘one of the most ornamental and comfortable wooden buildings in Queensland’, but it again burnt to the ground in 1915.

In 1916 the wooden building was replaced by a ‘modern’ two-storey brick structure which opened in December 1916. In December 1917, however, the ‘new’ Royal Hotel was destroyed by fire. In November 2014, the restored Royal Hotel, again a wooden two-storey building (McDowall Street) was destroyed by fire.