Surviving calls to have it demolished, a war-time bombing and even a spell in the public service, the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel in London has been restored to its luxurious best.

We all wish we could make time stand still and linger a little longer in our prime - spend a few more days, weeks or even hours at a favourite place or in the company of loved ones.

Eventually, even the most sensible of us will look inward and back at the moments when we seemed the right fit for the fashions and happenings of a particular age.

No doubt a similar nostalgia would have settled upon Sir George Gilbert Scott, the architect of the Midland Grand Hotel, if he was around when the building was forced into an inglorious retirement as host to a hive of offices to British Rail staff.

Once one of London’s most glittering hotels, the Midland Grand had become a dinosaur. Burdened with an ever-increasing maintenance bill and suffering at the hands of its competition, profits began to slide and it was forced into public service.

The St Pancras Renaissance Hotel and the former Midland Grand Hotel

Originally commissioned as a rail hotel for guests arriving at St Pancras Station, when the Grand Midland commenced operations it had already achieved iconic status.

Opened in 1873 by Queen Victoria, the hotel carried a £438,000 price tag. Almost unbelievably that comes to about $650 million in today’s money (and that’s with the Australian dollar at a historical high against the British pound).

It was one of the capital’s most expensive hotels and set a number of benchmarks in the quickly changing hospitality industry, but as impressive as it was, as the years rolled by it was inevitably left behind with a number of calls made for its demolition.

Thankfully, the building found a savior in the form of poet laureate John Betjeman, who successfully ran a campaign to save the Gothic masterpiece and have it granted Grade I listed status (the equivalent of an Australian heritage listing).

An example of the wonderful detail in the restoration

Now some five decades later, the announcement of a new international station at St Pancras has completed its revival.

The London landmark was the beneficiary of a loving $150 million restoration and once again its spires stand proudly above the busy St Pancras rail station as the St Pancras Renaissance London Hotel.

Preserving the glamour of the old station and the romance of rail travel during the 1800s, it maintains an elegance and charm by offering global travellers a gateway to London as the terminus for the Eurostar high-speed trains.

The Booking Office Bar and Restaurant

The station itself is also home to a high-speed service that can take travellers to the Olympic Stadium in just six minutes.

The magnificent interior of the hotel has been restored to its former glory with painstaking attention to detail using expert teams of hundreds of craftsmen and painters.

At the back of the hotel can be found Barlow House, a 120,000 square foot extension containing 207 rooms with a contemporary design.

At the front of the hotel sits the Chambers, an area that feels almost like a castle and houses 38 rooms branching off the spectacular ‘Grand Staircase’, widely acknowledged as the most majestic in England.

The St Pancras concourse

But it’s the hotel’s public areas that are the main attraction and the real reason to stay. It’s a thrill to be surrounded by the beauty of Sir Gilbert’s creation and take in the tessellated floors, gold leafing, murals, polished granite columns and Gothic stonework brought back to life in its restoration.

To take a walk directly onto the breathtaking St Pancras station concourse hooded with glass and steel is an absolute delight.

Guests can re-live the Victorian era at The Booking Office Bar and Restaurant. Recreated in the original ticket office, it’s been compared to the ante-room of a cathedral.

The hotel also features a 450 capacity event hall, a private club, a barber’s shop and luxury spa, which includes a swimming pool and 6 treatment rooms (the perfect retreat from a day in The Capital).

Many of the original areas of the hotel considered of particular historical importance have been carefully renovated including the ‘Ladies Smoking Room’, the first place in Europe where it was acceptable for women to smoke in public.

The Grand Staircase

A testament to the hotel’s status, the St Pancras was voted the Number One Hotel in the UK in the The Sunday Times Magazine’s 2011 top 100 hotels in the world.

More importantly, the hotel is truly a place for Londoners and travellers alike to take in a living masterpiece and experience the beauty of Sir Gilbert’s original creation.

It’s an achievement that will guarantee one of the man’s finest creations a bit more time in the sun.

While you’re there:

• A tour of the hotel is free to guests and is the best way to experience the beauty of the place and learn about its colourful past. You’ll be done in 90 minutes.

• Men can escape to the barber shop where they can learn how to shave the traditional way. It’s handily located within the spa that contains a sauna and steam room and a plunge pool. Take a ‘journey’ with your treatment and be massaged all the way to India.

• Dine at the Gilbert Scott restaurant, occupying the hotel’s original hall and coffee room and run by Marcus Wareing, or take lunch in the booking office with its views of the St Pancras concourse. The Ticket Booth in the Booking Office Bar & Restaurant is a listed structure in its own right.

• Go ghost hunting in a search for the hotel’s oldest residents. An Edwardian gentleman has apparently been seen outside the former gentlemen’s smoking room on the ground floor while a ‘woman in white’ haunts the first floor corridors.

British Airways flies to London from around $2055 return. From London, Weymouth is three hours by car or train.