How this list works

Houses reach this reference for one reason: the building. A berth instead of a room, a structure that melts, a house built for other work and turned to this one. Comfort, service and popularity are not grounds for entry, and neither is anything a hotel says about itself in its own advertising.

The sources are the hotel and operator sites, published maps, official registers and reporting in the press. Where a claim could not be confirmed in one of those, it is either left out or written more loosely so that it stays true. Nothing here is written from memory or from a stay.

What is missing is deliberate. There are no prices, no stars, no counts of rooms, no reviews and no booking links. Hotels are not compared with one another, and none is recommended over another. Nothing on this site earns anything from the houses it describes.

The winter section needs different reading from the rest. Those structures work only while the cold holds, they are raised again to a fresh plan each year, and their season moves with the weather. Where an operator keeps a hall cooled by machine, or heated rooms that work through the year, the entry says so instead of leaving the reader to assume it.

Every entry ends with the same three keys. Kind of building says what sort of structure it is in the words of its own source. Nearest station or road names the closest railway stop, terminal or through road, without advising anyone how to travel. Looked up gives the month the sources were last read.

The sections are written to different shapes because they raise different questions. A capsule house needs its shared floors explained; a winter structure needs its season explained; a city house needs its quarter explained; and a resort entered for its building needs neither its gaming floor nor its offers described.

If something here is wrong or out of date, write and say so, and give the source. Corrections are made on the page rather than announced. The address is on the contact page.