The Original Suites

[Rob Lightbody]

Its a shame its B&W but an original shot from the newly built penthouses.

Photo is from QE2 Story's collection and not to be reproduced.

[June Ingram]

Great photo, Rob, and thanks for posting.

Even though I liked our QE2's lines better before the penthouse suites were added, they - the suites - added what the public wanted. 

[Chris]

The glorious lines were restored in 1986/87 in my opinion when they finished off Signal Deck. Made the world of difference. That and her rebuilt funnel.

[Michael Gallagher]

Rob

Afraid the picture above is of one of the original suites on Two Deck. In the 1977 refit they were refurbished (details below) and sadly the beautiful wood was repainted in black:

Suites 2065, 2067 and 2072 were completely stripped and refurbished as part of a new scheme involving a total of ten of the original Schreiber rooms on One and Two Decks. The new scheme included painting the dressing tables and wooden units black, covering the walls in wallpaper and painting the ceilings white.

The wood was lost forever. These two images show the black painted wood in 2008!

[Michael Gallagher]

This is an original Penthouse:

[Rob Lightbody]

Thank you for the fascinating clarification, which I never knew about at all!

Those rooms were ruined!  Totally bland and characterless.  I'm so glad they realised they made a mistake before proceeding further (Do you know the reason they didn't do more?)

[Michael Gallagher]

Thankfully they didn't do more - perhaps they realised they were making a mistake. But the black paint and wallpaper was considered trendy in 1977!!

[Michael Gallagher]

This diagram shows the layout of a block of cabins (2066 - 2074) just off the Midships Lobby port side. They were originally designed by Gaby Schreiber and the arrangement of the access alleyways allowed these five rooms to be combined in various ways to form suites of two or three cabins.

The images of each cabin follow below and were taken in 2008 - see how the layouts hadn't changed!

Cabin 2074 is on the far left and 2066 is on the far right in the diagram.

[Michael Gallagher]

Cabin 2066

[Michael Gallagher]

Cabin 2068

[Michael Gallagher]

Cabin 2070

[Michael Gallagher]

Cabin 2072

[Michael Gallagher]

Cabin 2074

[Thomas Hypher]

Out of curiosity, did the cabins on the right hand side of the original diagram conflict with SOLAS in her latter years given how they appear to be accessed? Such as Cabin 2066? To do with the novel arrangement.

[Isabelle Prondzynski]

I love how on QE2 there is so much idiosyncrasy, all those big or small differences between cabins, even this block which was designed by one person / team and as a group of cabins to work together!

And I love looking at the map and working out where internal links were made between cabins so that they could be combined.

Thank you once again for your great expertise and for all the records you kept and now share .