For more than 40 years the Middle East Association has occupied the building known as Bury House on Bury Street. The street and the building were probably named after Bury St Edmonds where the ground landlord, the Jermyn family, had its country seat. The first documented resident of number 33 (Bury House) was in1796 when it was occupied by the Hanoverian Minister, Baron de Lenthe.
In 1812, when Napoleon was retreating from Moscow, records show that the house had passed to Sir John MacDonald a descendent of the Jacobite heroine, Flora MacDonald. Sir John was the adjutant-general to his close friend Lord Hopetoun, during Wellington's French campaign and nursed him in Bayonne when he was wounded and taken prisoner.
Records show that in 1824 the Irish poet, Thomas Moore, was lodging at No 33. Moore was a curious anomaly - a rich poet; Longmans paid him £3000 for one poem. In his day he was as popular as Lord Byron.
By 1842 number 33 Bury Street had become a lodging house run by Mrs Elizabeth Cowling. About 1850 it changed hands and became the Rawlings Hotel, run by William Rawlings. It continued as this until 1900 when the site of 31-35 was cleared to make way for a new building to designs by Robert J.Worley which was completed two years later in 1902. The ground floor was designed as shops, the first floor as showrooms or offices and the upper floors as residential chambers.
These upper chambers had numerous occupants of which two are note worthy. The first was Albermarle Bertie Cator in 1904. 'Alby" Cator was the Scots Guards officer incarnate. During the Great War, at the first battle of Ypres, he assumed command for several critical days when he was the only field officer left in the brigade. Cator survived the war and lived until 1932, when, at the age of 55 he dropped dead from a heart attack whilst out hunting.
The second noteworthy occupant was Sir John Gatacre in 1911. His family had lived at Gatacre in Shropshire. As a lad, three months short of his seventeenth birthday, he found himself embroiled in the Indian Mutiny when he was attached to the 6th Bombay Infantry. When he died in London in 1932 at the age of 91, he was probably the last surviving witness of this horrendous event.
By 1940 the residential chambers at number 33 had become service flats which became the Borgs Hotel by the end of the war.
It continued as a hotel until acquired by the present occupant the Middle East Association. The current occupiers have modernised the interior whilst maintaining the atmosphere of its previous tenants. The reception hall that can now hold up to 100 visitors is air-conditioned and fitted with the latest IT presentation equipment. In house caterers can provide food and beverages for any occasion from discussion groups for visiting Saudi Arabian ministers and princes to receptions for Lebanese businessmen and from seminars for Anglo Arabian interest groups to lunches for British security organisations and bankers! These historic and elegant facilities are available to anyone from the UK or overseas, members or non-members of the Association.
