I went to the “worst” hotel in the iconic Seaside Town. (Image: David Nelson)
When I arrived, the potato chips were stomped onto the carpet, but when we left 18 hours later they were still there.
Finding “the worst hotel in Blackpool” is no feat. There are a lot there. Finally, I decided not to stay at the hotel with a technically low rating. This is on par with the small microbusiness that itself cannot stand up, and rather large enough for many guests to pass through the door each week, while meeting the balance of bad reviews.
My pick had both of these in the spade – and my local guide said it was “absolute s******”.
Noblek Castle is the north front post base of the budget chain Britannia Hotel. Of the 8,697 reviews on TripAdvisor (at the time of writing), 4,082 give a lower one-star score of “bad,” offering an average of 2.2 out of 5. We have contacted Britannia Hotels for comments on this article. They didn't.
Noblek is a local landmark just over four miles north of the heart of Blackpool and is clearly rising from the residential environment.
Norbreck has an interesting design (Image: Lancs Live)
The nasty turret, painted in boring black and grey, provides an imaginary shooter that sticks to the sky and protects its mock arm bouncing off from the invaders below, embarrassing and unashamed. But in the end, time was the biggest enemy in this place.
I was checked in by a woman who did nothing quickly but smiled back and worked with a systematic inevitability.
In my time, I only saw another person behind the reception desk with her once, but still he had to call her from behind to help him. Thanks to her, I don't think there's any reason why the place is still going.
The room is basic but no major complaints from me (Image: Harry Thompson)
It may not have had as much love as you would like, but the room was not sunny from any fear (Image: Harry Thompson)
Last year, after a visit by Tiktok content creator Zach Jones, the hotel was called “the worst hotel in Blackpool” and pointed out that it was warning at £35 a night, pointing out all sorts of dirty details.
By the time I went a year later, the double room had risen to 39 pounds. There was a luxurious view overlooking the dilapidated garden, and security lights that penetrated most of the night. Has the good times been over?
Norbrec Castle wasn't a whiplash boy of content creators and tabloid journalists. Built in 1869, once a holiday home for wealthy aristocrats, Schlock quickly threw gorgeous parties for his heeled companions as he began renting rooms to members of the upper class.
When World War II broke out, it became a north shelter for evacuated civil servants, and when it was returned to its owner in 1951, 11 years later, it had its own golf course, a tennis court of five people, 600 people, bowling greens, ballrooms, cocktail bars and a range of conferences. Photos from the 1930s show it as a lively hub of leisure enjoying the glorious era.
By the time they arrived 74 years later, traces of the nobility's vibrancy were difficult to find. Glover games that had broken up lined up in the hallway, with women in push chairs sitting in the vaping in the lobby. Cheap furniture was scattered sparsely, and the strange smell of stagnation greeted me at various points. The carpet was dirty and there was eternal drip noise in my room.
When my room arrived, my room was stomped into the carpet (Image: Harry Thompson)
The rooms were sparse and the furniture was basic, but the bed felt like a spring sheet, not a mattress. But it has a roof and will take me all night.
In the late 70s and early 80s, the hotel won cash in the explosive music scene of the time, hosting early gigs and hosting comers like Playstors, Iron Maiden, Deflepard and Ozzy Osbourne.
There was politics too. It was the scene of the meeting where the Social Democrats and the Liberals merged to form the Liberal Democrats they are today. These days are already over.
On my evening of my stay, I finished my previous booking in town centre around 7:30pm, but the idea of returning the tram for a long night at Noblek made me feel cold and far away from home.
When I emerge from the windy coastal road, Blackpool is now far behind me south of me, so the tower again rises grotesquely and above the house of Comictal. It reminded me of the corpse of a whale on the beach: horribly wrong, but impossible to look away.
Some bits might have been pretty (Image: Harry Thompson)
As we crossed the windsweep parking lot around 9pm, the guards were standing at the door, making us think about Schlock and their gorgeous parties, ballrooms and cocktail bars. I thought about the war, the Victorian boom in Blackpool, the war on tennis courts and Joy.
Maybe this is a light-like figure of those who inherited the Earth in 2025, a witness to the slow creep of failure, squeezing out the last final history and profitability to continue things as much as possible in the name of the last penny.
That night I lay in my bed, passing through a paper-like wall, listening to everything the father and child in the next room said. I think they had a good time and were on an adventure together. Maybe Noblek Castle has some of them before it gets too far.
