Does anyone have photos of any US Youth Hostels? I would love to see photos of any of the US Youth Hostels which list members have recently mentioned.
The following two photos are scans of two postcards which I still have of a British youth hostel at which I spent two nights in 1970. This site was formerly the old City Mill in Winchester, Hampshire, England, originally built on the site of an earlier mill dating back 1000 years. I believe the building shown had been a gift to the town from Queen Mary Tudor, daughter of King Henry VIII, in the mid 1500s. After subsequent centuries of public and private use, the building had eventually gone into considerable disrepair and was no longer used. Leased by the National Trust to the Youth Hostel Association in 1932, it had been converted to simple dormitory style sleeping accommodations with one section for males and another for females. One photo linked below shows the common dining area. The other shows the river where it passes beneath the mill. The remains of the original wooden water wheel which once powered the grind stones for processing grain to flour could still be seen down a narrow staircase leading below the main entry level. The mill has more recently been fully restored and the original waterwheel and grindstones also rebuilt to operational condition capable of once again grinding grain for the first time in almost 100 years. It is now a museum, but what a wonderful, memorable and inspired use it had seen as a Hostel.
Wonderful memories abound of similar youth hostel sites throughout Europe. A shame I did not save more photos or post cards. How nice it would be if there were a similarly strong Youth Hostel movement in the US today.
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Bob Hanson, Albuquerque, NM, USA
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