FRONT OF HOUSE > The Cottage in the Wood
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How did you get into the hospitality industry ? Julie and I both used to work in London - we are not from the hotel or hospitality industry . I used to work as a management consultant in the City and I just got fed up of the grind . I was flying a lot to see clients and just working really long hours . I used to spend a lot of my time travelling and living in hotels for work , and so did Julie , and we also like to travel for pleasure . It got to a point where we thought we ’ d just combine our love of travelling and the knowledge we had gained of hotels and restaurants with our business experience . We thought : ‘ let ’ s put this into effect and buy a hotel ’. That was the idea behind it .
How did you end up purchasing The Cottage in the Wood ? Having been a management consultant everything was always very analytical to start with . As a result we had very strict criteria to what it was that we wanted ; it had to be within a two-and-a-half hour radius of London and near other large cities , Birmingham and Bristol are very nearby ; the numbers had to stack up on the business ; and then we were looking for something with a USP . There were only about five hotels at the time that fit the criteria , but when we came to view the cottage it ticked all of them and the views from the hotel are just incredible . The history is also amazing it was Margaret Thatcher ’ s favourite hotel ; Elgar played here ; C . S Lewis came here ; and Tolkien is said to have come here as well . It has a fantastic history and it was all of those things together that drew us to the hotel .
Could you tell us a bit more about the history ? We have the cottage , which is probably the oldest element on the site , and that dates back to the early 1700s and was a woodsmans cottage . The main property dates back to the mid-1700s , when it was built for the lady of the Godolphin family when she moved from the family estate house . It became a commercial building in 1919 and we have named our restaurant after that date , which will hold for a good party in 2019 . It became a restaurant called Key Rooms in 1919 and then over the years it developed into a hotel . For a long time in the 70s and early 80s it was owned by the Ross family , and they really did a lot of development work and turned it into the restaurant with rooms . It was then purchased by a different family and they built a lot of the rooms and turned it into a 30 bedroom hotel . Our idea is to take it even further on from there .
You ’ re in the process of a £ 2.5m refurbishment now ? We have just finished phase one and that involved a brand new kitchen , a new expanded restaurant and a new bar . The bar is a whole new business for the hotel , it used to have a wet trade but with the views and putting a nice cocktail bar in there I think we saw some real potential for growth in that space . We really want to turn the business model on its head and do something more destination restaurant and bar with rooms . It just so happens that we have 30 bedrooms and are a country
www . hotelowner . co . uk April 2017