Abandoned Hotel California Pub/Revolver Club Birkenhead (abandoned May 2018)

Explore #1

Abandoned Hotel California/Revolver Birkenhead

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It was first abandoned sometime around April/May 2018. As the owners moved to a new venue that is still going called "Mollys Chambers", the substantial Victorian era building has been one of quite a few others in Birkenhead left to fend for itself against the entropy of time and the inevitable slow onslaught of vandalous human intervention against the outside and inside of the building. 

As of 2025 a single window remains not smashed somewhere around the back of the two storey building. Any urban explorers who venture in are certainly the absolute least of its problems.

A visit to the former Royal Castle pub and then live rock music venue which went under the names Hotel California and Revolver between 2004 and 2018 and is/was located in the middle of a roundabout between the Rock Retail Park and the Cammel Laird factory on the A41 near the centre of Birkenhead. 

A look at the more advanced decay in 2025, just over 8 years on from abandonment, pictures mostly on the ground floor at the former bar and stage areas as the advance decay particularly with much of the roof missing following arson attacks making the first floor most likely a bit treacherous although much of the floor does seem to be holding up, but other explorers have lately not wanted to risk treading on it but you can see some YouTube videos showing its state in 2022 and 2023, one showing how the kitchen which still looked quite substantial and modern with metallic plugs now having in a year suffered complete cave in from the room upstairs which has no roof, the effect of which makes it look a bit like a bomb has hit it and pulled all the units off the compromised wall, and the plaster is mostly gone and it's just mostly down to the brickwork. 

What remains of the residential kitchen. Spoiler alert, not much, but you can see it used to be a fairly good kitchen, now it looks like a kitchen caught up in the Big Bang captured one femtosecond after detonation.

Another room which might have once been a bedroom still has some remnants of the now fading colour purple which the wall was likely completely covered in, it is just down to the floorboards but they seem to be holding out very well. This is also one of the sadder sights of this lost floor.

One room round the south side opened out to bay windows and looked like it was quite a good room. An east facing room next to the wrecked kitchen which was also east facing once still had a leather sofa taking up much of it but this has simply disappeared.

Along the staircase leading from the main ruined bar area relatively new graffiti declares "Long live the Cali" in bright red. At the top of the staircase which has long lost its quite stylish wooden bannisters the remnants of the first floor are simply left open to the elements, as this part of the ruined venue was more or less the epicentre of the worst arson attack on the abandoned building back in 2019. 

Plant life has taken root in a landing which is now just an outside ledge. Some charred remains of a staircase which would have once taken you up to the second floor which now is almost completely gone. 

A doorframe from this former floor high up around the south facing car park end of the building just opens out to nowhere as an external fire escape staircase seemed to have been taken down by whoever back sometime around summer 2022 as Google Street View history and other urban Explorer videos reveal. A fire escape leading to one door that leads into the first floor round the north side does still remain as of 2025 however.

A large once stage area round the side of the devastated bar has now lost even more of its remaining roof, a mains plug installation eerily hangs loose from what was once an actual ceiling. 

The outbuildings which were once the beer gardens (called the sound garden) now sort of resemble an old crumbling down farm, with the overgrowth and loose nature.




The cellar was piled high with a trolley blocking the steps down into it, another YouTube video revealed that it's quite a substantial room, now partly flooded and someone has at some point decided to use beer bottle crates as stepping stones. It is naturally the most protected and still structurally sound part of the building that remains and that has certainly drawn some likely vagrants there from time to time. 

The Ground floor still feels quite secure yet a fairly substantial hole reveals that there might be some chance that this could potentially collapse into what should be an unseen cellar area below.


The toilets are predictably ruined with just a cistern remaining in one and vandals couldn't even let it still have a toilet seat anymore.

The abandoned building is full of the sounds of the A41 close by, often motorbikes which echo through the blackness inside, daylight from outside providing the harsh contras