Rt Hon John Wharton Chairman of NER

This blip was taken in the impressive Board Room of the North Eastern Railway, now a hotel in York. It was meant to be a a conventional view of the main fireplace and the portrait hanging there.

The lighting effects are quite accidental but I think interesting.

The portrait is of the Rt Hon John Lloyd Wharton who was a Unionist MP for Durham and then Ripon and in 1906 became the Chairman of the NER.

The Board Room was built in 1906 when the magnificent HQ building was constructed just inside the York City Walls, close to the NER Station.

The NER was one of the constituents of the East Coast Mainline with the Great Northern and the North British, and dominated the railways in the North Riding, Durham and Northumberland and the mining and industrial areas therein.