JJ's "Gin Palace" luxury riverside townhouse

Sympathetically converted in the early 2000's, this unique historic property is part of the first purpose built transportation hotel in the UK (and possibly in the world?). It was built for rich business people to stay and conduct their business adjacent to one of the busiest canal networks in the country. The english canal network came decades before the steam train network and their famous railway hotels.

Stourport was built as an inland port connecting the heartland of the Industrial Revolution with the rest of the World. Huge sailing ships would unload their exotic cargos from all over world at Bristol onto smaller ships that would sail up the River Severn to Stourport to be unloaded onto canal barges to take them onto Birmingham and other major midland towns and cities.

Cargos would also be exported in the opposite direction including prisoners who were convicted of minor crimes to be deported to colonies in the new world such as Australia, It is rumoured that some prisoners were securely held overnight in the basement of The Tontine.

Built circa 1772 in the period between the Battle of Culloden ("Outlander") and the Battle of Trafalgar, this was the decade that Australia was discovered by Captain James Cook.

You can still see the reminders of those days including open beams in the ceiling and rope marks on the corner of the building where carts were pulled with their heavy loads from the River Severn sailing ships to the locks and canal barges.

Experience genuine history!

Why is the property called The Tontine?

A Tontine is a unique(!) financial investment named after Lorenzo Tonti a Neapolitan banker who introduced the system into France in the 17th century.

A Tontine consists of a group of rich business people who each invest their capital into an asset such as a hotel or a bridge. Each investor then receives income from the use of this asset in proportion to the amount they have invested, however, what makes a Tontine unique is that when a member of the group dies, their proportion of the investment and their income is shared amongst the remaining living investors in the group. The last person alive gets the lot!

This clearly creates a perverse incentive to "bump off" your fellow investors.

There a number of Tontine Hotels remaining in the UK including at historic Iron Bridge in Telford (not too far away), Northallerton in North Yorkshire, Greenock near Glasgow in Scotland and Peebles in the Scottish Borders.

Other notable Tontine investments include Richmond Bridge over the River Thames in London and The Tontine Coffee House on Wall Street in New York City, built in 1792, was the first home of the New York Stock Exchange.

If you're on a tour, why not visit them all?

For more information, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tontine

There are also a number of fictional books available on Amazon which include "Tontine" in their title, however, they all share a common theme that the last person standing gets the lot!