Southernhay House Hotel, Exeter | Blogs

Finding Exeter

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 08:01:31 GMT

a market town without a market?

I've always thought of my home town this way; it operates on a human scale. It has the social density of somewhere smaller, but the infrastructure of somewhere larger. It certainly should have a proper market - but that’s another story.

It’s not quite a city despite the Cathedral. Not quite a village, but something in between; slightly self-contained, often underestimated by national news and its own residents. Exeter doesn’t shout; it persists. Persistence is unfashionable and is therefore a very particular kind of power.

Visitors come looking for charm…

Visitor’s Exeter

If you arrive fresh, Exeter feels almost improbably compact. You can walk everywhere. The Cathedral appears suddenly above the high street, as if it’s been waiting politely for you to notice it. The streets curve inwards on old desire lines. The quay opens outwards. Countryside presses close in visible fields, estuary light, the softer edges of Devon.

Exeter has charm. It’s not Bath’s honey-stone grandeur or Bristol’s energy. Exeter reveals itself in increments. A green space tucked behind an ancient wall. A quiet café in a Georgian terrace. A river path that leads you somewhere unexpectedly peaceful through long grasses.

Visitors see a picturesque city, they can feel history in the streets, they enjoy how easy it is - on the eye, on the senses, how much light touches the rooftops. They leave with the feeling that Exeter is…nice.

Which is true, and indeed nice. At my age, in this world, today and now - I’ll take nice. But what makes it so?

Resident’s Exeter

Living here is, of course, a different experience. Over time, you feel the layers: Roman foundations beneath your feet, Medieval trade routes mapped into street names and actual street patterns. The rebuilding after 1942, when much of the centre was flattened and the city got back up and carried on. The Cathedral at the visual and literal centre of it all.

That’s what I see, after my two decades here. Exeter carries on, resilient and shoulder-shrugging through cycles of global tension, annual rituals, weather events, politics. Schools cycle through years and generations. The university arrives each autumn and leaves each summer. The Home Counties stop by once a year ‘on the way to Cornwall’. Businesses open, close, similar ones reappear. You can cross the city on foot and run into three people you know. The pace is navigable.

This is why I call it a market town without a market; it’s steady, not loud.

For example, Exeter is the only UK city to hold UNESCO City of Literature status in 2026 - the ‘Year of Reading’. I was baffled as to why. I am a reader. I would never put Exeter top of my poll, so I asked the University why? The short answer is that the Cathedral quietly holds one of the great Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of poetry. Written in the late tenth century, it’s a window into everyday life at that time. Exeter does not advertise that fact. Consistency, not flamboyance, has given us this title. Likewise, the University attracts serious talent without needing to posture. The Quay worked as a port long before it was picturesque. There are family names here that you would have heard in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Exeter’s power is cumulative, not explosive. It doesn’t reinvent itself every decade, but accumulates layers. Roman, Medieval, Georgian, Victorian, Post-Blitz reconstruction.

The Risk of Understatement

Do I think Exeter underplays itself?

When a city is allergic to hype, as Exeter so obviously is, there is a danger that steadiness slips into invisibility. Visitors describe it as ‘nice’. Residents shrug at it, comparing it to Bristol or Bath. We know it works, but we don’t always articulate why. Endurance without a strong narrative is mistaken for inertia.

I realise that Exeter is quietly resilient, absorbing change, rebuilding rather than rebranding. It improves by accumulation. I cannot reinvent Exeter, but I can describe it better. I shall stop apologising for its scale and recognise its strength. Exeter isn’t a ‘nearly’ city; it’s a place that has survived, rebuilt, educated, traded, and rebooted for centuries without losing its footing in real life.

I’ve continued to build my life and my business here not because Exeter is loud, but because it is reliable. Because it allows you to create something thoughtfully, without being swallowed whole. Because it gives you room to work, to think, to host, all within walking distance of a Cathedral and its book of dirty Anglo-Saxon poems that has seen a thousand years pass and simply remained.

It doesn’t shout; it persists.

Value. Added. Taxed.

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 16:14:26 GMT

You pay more for added value.

Just not to the people who deliver it.

And not to help grow the business that provides it.

Most people think of #VAT as abstract, as a line on a receipt, a background hum. In reality, VAT shapes what we buy, where we go, and whether entire sectors survive or fail.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

The UK taxes hotels, cafés and restaurants harder than almost any comparable country in Europe and then acts surprised when prices rise, businesses struggle, and town centres hollow out.

In #hospitality, one fifth of every pound taken at the till goes straight to government. That’s before business rates, staffing costs, utilities, rent, food, maintenance, before the business itself glimpses a margin at all.

The logic. And the flaw

VAT makes sense in theory. A broad, catch-all tax on ‘non-essential’ consumption helps fund essential services. As consumers and business owners alike, we understand that logic.

But theory is nothing when it collides with real life and it’s messy mixture of needs and desires. We eat together, meet, travel, celebrate, rest. These aren’t luxuries in a life well lived; they’re how a healthy society functions. Yet we pay 20% extra, routinely, simply to participate in everyday life outside our own front door.

At some point, VAT stops being neutral and starts being punitive.

A lesson in temperature

If you buy a cold ready meal from a supermarket - a Charlie Bigham fish pie - you pay no VAT. You can take it home, heat and eat it.

If you buy the same food hot, you pay additional VAT at 20%.

This is why supermarkets obsess over temperature. It’s why rotisserie chickens have disappeared from UK shelves. Somewhere along the way, the law of thermodynamics became a proxy for “added value”.

But let’s agree - hospitality in all it’s glorious, generous, efficient and caring sense, “adds value”. That’s why you choose to eat out, rather than wash up at home. You want the buzz, the care, the new, the familiar and the ease of enjoyment without prep or clearing. Adding value is the very definition of what we do.

Government thinks that the value we add to your experience is 20%. We agree it’s valuable. We just think the people creating it should benefit from that added value: whether that’s to reinvest, to reward the providers, or to match prices more keenly to their real cost and delivery.

Europe made an economic decision. The UK didn’t.

When you stay in a hotel, eat breakfast, or have dinner in a restaurant, the UK charges 20% VAT.

In France, Spain, Italy - around 10% (averaged: these countries distinguish between food and accommodation but you get the point). In Germany - 7%. Portugal and Greece - 6-13% depending on category. It’s tempting to say that this is down to a cultural view of hospitality and long-standing traditions. But it’s not; these EU countries didn’t make a moral judgement about hotels. They made an economic one.

Those countries recognise that hospitality is price-sensitive, employment-heavy, and locally rooted. When you tax it less, demand rises. When demand rises, jobs, wages and tax receipts follow.

The UK currently takes a different path.

Hospitality isn’t a luxury niche. It’s one of the largest employers in the country, currently supporting around 7% of all jobs, and it’s deeply woven into everyday life.

It employs young people in their first job, parents working flexible hours, people in coastal towns, rural areas and regional cities, and whole supply chains, from farmers to tradespeople, grocers to creatives.

Unlike tech or finance, hospitality can’t move abroad. It can’t automate its way out of trouble or shift it’s fiscal home. When demand drops, the impact is immediate and very local.

Government says it wants stronger regional economies, thriving high streets, more domestic tourism, and better jobs outside London. Hospitality delivers all of those things, if our supply is allowed to breathe for long enough that demand can resurface.

Cutting VAT on hotels and restaurants would lower prices immediately, encourage people to travel and eat out more, support jobs and hours, and bring money back through income tax and National Insurance.

High VAT doesn’t mean people “just pay more”

When prices rise, people don’t protest. In the 21st century, they quietly opt out: one less meal out; a shorter stay; a postponed trip.

In a perverse but understandable way, customers blame us for rising costs. (Gentle reader: consider that your gas and electricity suppliers pay only 5% VAT.)

Instead of asking whether hospitality VAT is already too high, the Treasury is now even flirting with additional local levies: tourist taxes, added on top of existing VAT.

This is not reform. It’s piling it on, and perverse.

During lockdown, reduced VAT wasn’t theoretical; it was make-or-break. With limited trading possible, pricing could stay keen, we could service demand and jobs were protected.

Cutting VAT on hospitality would immediately lower prices, stimulate demand, support employment, and return revenue through income tax and National Insurance.

This isn’t theoretical. I’m making special pleading for hospitality - but in reality I want a tax system that reflects how the real economy works and cuts the fat off where there’s fat to be cut while supporting those sectors that are on their knees.

This is not special pleading. It’s how functioning economies behave.

If we’re serious about growth, jobs and vibrant town centres, the real question isn’t why hospitality wants lower VAT.

The real question is why the UK insists on taxing one of its most human, employment-rich industries harder than almost anywhere else – and then wonders why it’s struggling.

Breaking Bad Behaviour

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 15:41:02 GMT

Not ‘just’ theft: the social contract of hospitality

In mid December, two women spent two hours drinking two Cosmos in our Club Room and then walked out. Unremarkable women, embracing the anonymity of middle age and using it to steal from us. I do not want to take payment from customers when they order, since most of our guests are, while sometimes messy, demanding, soppy, needy - always kinda normal and nice.

I posted the women from our front door CCTV. I chose an image that kept their full faces obscure (my intention was more general than specific), and I didn’t post the audio of them congratulating each other, either. Because, who cares, really, these days, when everything soft and social is up for grabs? Certainly there would be no police action: just the sound of our staff picking themselves up from an, as yet, one-off.

A couple of weeks later, towards the end of the December jollities, a group of around twelve people walked into our bar on spec. We were busy and told them we couldn’t serve them that evening. They were cocky, already feisty with booze, and after a pleasurable round of conversation we showed them the door. On the way out, the last man swept the contents of the reception table up and threw them at our staff member’s face. This included not just The Good Hotel Guide, but signage in glass and metal frames, a vase, and a Victorian candlestick. He missed. She slow hand-clapped as he and his work colleagues left the building. I screen-grabbed his exit and - once again posted to socials.

Why did I post about these incidents?

A normal, fun-filled, sunlight post on our socials garners around 20–60 likes. The dumpy women reached 62,000 views. We are all fascinated with transgression. The opportunities are up for grabs in small businesses (arguably even more so in larger ones). Yet this is how we choose to run our bar and how our guests like to drink: informally, trusting, respectful.

But media views were not on my mind when I posted. Would you have ‘named and shamed’? Interestingly, I felt guilty doing so and hesitated, finger hovering. Part of me felt that the fact we had not avoided a theft, swerved a man-baby tantrum, kept everything on a level and calm… meant we had failed. We were, in some way, responsible for these people’s bad behaviour. We’re supposed to be all things to all humans in hospitality: always look on the bright side, never complain, and turn all negative stories into hilarious jokes.

Anger is unprofessional, boundaries are barriers rather than self-preservation, and we are all expected to ‘get over it’.

More practically, was I simply highlighting our weak spots and making us vulnerable? Look: this is how easily we are exploited. Typically, I was overthinking, but my apprehension and guilt in the reveal, were real. Then the sense of violation of my staff in what should be a safe working space, my space too, and my anger kicked in. This. Is. Not. OK. It’s not normal behaviour and it has nothing to do with our offering, policies, or procedures. It’s them, not us.

I know that retail: supermarkets, high street and high end, is being hammered in the same ways. And that our experience is thankfully slight compared to many with more public access and simply more people passing through… and yet. If I am going to unpick my anger and sense of personal violation in these episodes, its root is the thought that somehow, in the general mind, hospitality and those who work in it are infrastructure, not people. If I confronted our frumpy females, they would have said, “Well, no-one’s hurt; you can take the hit; just look at the place - you can afford it.” Our man-baby might have said, “It’s not my fault you have hard objects around the place, in easy reach - I just chucked it all at the floor anyway; I’d never hit anyone (least of all a woman).” That’s a genuine quote, by the way, from a different place, similar long-ago circumstances.

Where does this leave us all, starting another new year? Are some people just horrible? I think, yes. They obviously are. There are currents swirling around, too, that have become stronger because they are encouraged, reflected, and magnified. The attitude that any crime is ‘victimless’, that any damage suffered is the fault of someone else, the lack of connection to people as being the same as you, these were strong tropes in 2025.

I’m glad I posted those images, but I don’t want to have any reason to do that again. We all have our boundaries, and I will not absorb the impact these incidents had on us like a sponge. This is not normal behaviour, and I reject it and call it out for what it is.

Intentional Hospitality

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 09:37:28 GMT

Human Hosting is still the luxury you crave

This piece reflects how we think about hospitality at Southernhay House — and why we believe our brand of intentional, human-centred hospitality will matter more than ever in the years ahead.

The word luxury has grown threadbare in the lobbies of modern British hospitality. It is used to describe everything from half-hearted ‘vintage’ decor to app-based check-ins with digital keys and an ipad in your bedroom.

Hospitality, rooted in the relationship between host and stranger, originally implied not just service but meeting in the flesh; the act of welcoming, sheltering and engaging a guest with goodwill. In its commercial form, the hospitality industry is a bedroom, food and beverage, and everything that supports travel. But that framing misses something that I am obsessed with: the intangible, behavioural heart of what it means to be hospitable.

Today, economic and social currents make human engagement increasingly rare and, therefore, valuable. Incidentally, this may be one of the sweet spots where we can elide financial and emotional benefit.

Disappearance of Casual Third Places

Across England, the steady loss of local pubs, cafés and unmediated gathering places is not just a statistic; it is social infrastructure quietly closing. Approx 1 pub per day closed during 2025 - it’s harder to quantify the restaurants, small B&Bs and hotels also shutting weekly.

These were ordinary spaces where people met, talked and belonged on a whim. There’s such a cocktail of causes that make this depressingly predictable. You can cite rising costs (on everything, not only employment), regulation, the wringing out of small businesses by government. Last, but not least, your own behavioural trends, impulses and where and when you socialise and spend. Your whims.

So hospitality operators who emphasise experience over turnover: reservations over walk-ins, hotels that greet guests from first enquiry rather than automation, where housekeepers know your name, is not asceticism or elitism. This is a market response to scarcity: intent is a selling point.

Hospitality has split. On the one hand you have frictionless convenience — order via app, experience by algorithm, speed over nuance. On the other, deliberate connection: service that anticipates without formula, environments orchestrated but not programmed.

Let’s talk people: what they cost and what their is their value?

This country has long regarded hospitality work as temporary — a McJob before something “proper” begins. That view is increasingly out of step with reality. When skilled staff are hard to find, they become precious: judgement, discretion, the ability to see a guest beyond their booking status. If you can conquer this, as a hospitality professional, then the world is at your feet.

Reframing our attitude to those who work in the sector, reframes “luxury.” It is not about ornamentation, but about attention. A Duty Manager who remembers your name, notices tension in a conversation and adjusts the tempo of a meal, these are moments of empathetic labour, and they are expensive because they cannot be automated.

That DM is the antidote to AI and that is where their value lies. Of course, automation and AI are reshaping service back-of-house. Booking, inventory and pattern recognition can be handled by machines and you would be foolish not to; tech must liberates staff to focus on the unpredictable. Hospitality is art, not logistics.

Which I hope will prove the paradox that drives intentional hospitality: as AI perfects predictability, humans increasingly crave the opposite. A memorable night out can be messy: conversation, a spontaneous menu choice, a waiter who engages rather than just delivers.

Is Luxury dead then, in 2026?

Intentional hospitality is not a platitude. It is a practice of entering into the guest’s agenda thoughtfully, of designing experiences that are coherent but human, favouring connection over commodification. It’s tone, company, mood and a sense of “fit.”

Relationship capital, something that has recently been defined as “clienting” is an accumulated goodwill between provider and customer that resists commodification. In hospitality, this is literal: when a guest feels seen, understood, and responded to, their loyalty deepens. This is not transactional efficiency; it is relational currency. It’s a space that is wide open for those of us still standing in 2026. Intentional hospitality is deliberate choreography of presence, design, judgment and care in a world where those qualities are increasingly rare.

If this sounds gentle and grounded, that’s because it is. Luxury has shifted from bling to basics: comfort, emotional connection, restoration. This is the human premium, which you will be paying for something that AI cannot provide .

Hospitable places will always be, and should be, refuges from your day-to-day. But today, hospitality is not only about offering a room, a dry Martini or a meal; it is about offering a reason to be there that feels worth the time, attention and expense.

And that is something precious. If we can play this right, we can all win.

What this means for Southernhay House

At Southernhay House, this way of thinking is not theoretical. It shapes how we host, how we staff, how we design our spaces, and, often most importantly, how we decide what not to do.

We are small by choice. We take fewer bookings than we could. We favour discretion over display, individual judgements over corporate script, and consistency.

We believe parties and celebrations deserve to feel composed rather than chaotic. That business gatherings benefit from calm, privacy and good food rather than performative gloss. That a good night out can be memorable without being loud, and that being properly hosted is becoming one of the quiet luxuries of modern life.

This is what intentional hospitality looks like in practice.

Ghostly Exeter

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 15:10:11 GMT

the past is always present: in one of the UK's most haunted cities...

Exeter: Britain’s Fourth Most Haunted City?

You know York as the queen of ghostly goings-on, but Exeter gets an honourable mention in the league table of haunted Britain. It’s often ranked in the top five, and considering our history, it’s not hard to see why. Exeter has all the ingredients: monks and monasteries, witch trials and executions, medieval streets and secret underground passages — the perfect recipe for spirits, whether sinister or friendly. These aren’t vague urban legends but hauntings with dates, names and places that persist.

Ghosts aren’t confined to a single night of the year. They move with the seasons. Some whisper at Candlemas, others stir at the Winter Solstice; some return faithfully on the anniversaries of their deaths. Exeter’s spectral calendar is as real as its civic one.

Monks in the Shadows

Exeter once bristled with monastic life. St Nicholas Priory, founded in 1087, was a thriving Benedictine house until Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s. Like many former monastic sites, it quickly attracted stories of restless brothers.

Locals still report hooded figures gliding through the priory’s Tudor merchant rooms — especially around Candlemas (2 February), when tradition says spirits cross boundaries of darkness and light. On cold February nights, candles flicker in empty chambers, and some swear they hear the faint rustle of habits against old oak panels.

At Cowick Barton, once part of the priory estate mentioned in Domesday, diners talk of being watched by a spectral monk. Monks make ideal ghosts: instantly recognisable silhouettes, their hood and robe feeding the imagination when shadows fall. Each winter, when the nights are longest, Exeter’s monastic past seems to lean a little closer.

Witches at the Castle Gates

The darker side of Exeter’s haunting rests on solid history. In August 1682, three women from Bideford — Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles and Susanna Edwards — were tried at Rougemont Castle (14 August) and hanged at Heavitree Gallows (25 August). They were the last confirmed witch executions in England.

A few years later, in 1685, Alice Molland was condemned for witchcraft at the same court. A plaque on the castle wall still bears her name, though her fate remains uncertain. Today, Rougemont is said to be most restless in mid-August, when the air thickens and the echo of judgement seems to replay itself through the old courtrooms.

Visitors speak of sudden draughts, whispers on the walls, and a heaviness that lingers where justice faltered. Each year, those dates pass quietly — yet guides say if you stand by the castle gate at dusk on the 25th, you might hear the rumble of the watching crowd from the Heavitree direction (the name Heavitree, in itself, a modern reminder of the gallows).

Down in the Depths

Beneath Exeter’s High Street lies a labyrinth of medieval passages, built in the 14th century to carry spring water into the walled city. They’re open to the public today, but few can walk those tunnels without a shiver. Footsteps echo where none should; a chill breath grazes the neck.

Locals call it the Candlemas Draught — said to rise in early February, the same night monks are seen above ground in the priory cloisters. Some visitors claim that if you pause under the High Street near St Stephen’s, you can hear murmured Latin, or the drag of chains over stone. Perhaps the ghosts of the Dissolution found a way underground.

Not All Doom and Gloom: Friendly Spirits

Exeter’s ghosts aren’t all grim. At the 17th-century Custom House on the Quay, guides tell of a cheerful phantom wagoner who rattles past at dusk. He’s especially active around Valentine’s week, when lovers stroll the waterfront. Some say he’s searching for a long-lost sweetheart drowned in the Exe; others that he simply likes the company.

At St Nicholas Priory, staff whisper about a playful presence who rearranges chairs or moves keys — a “house ghost” more companion than menace. Even in midwinter, when the city feels half-asleep, there’s laughter in these stories.

Christmas at the Prospect Inn

Every Christmas Eve, the Prospect Inn by the Quay hosts its own visitation. Patrons have seen a small girl clutching a rag doll, wandering the stairs before fading at the landing. The fire crackles, carols drift from the bar, and someone feels a cold little hand slip into theirs. The landlords leave a candle burning for her each year — a quiet nod to the city’s most tender haunting.

So while Exeter may sit behind York, Edinburgh and Derby in the “most haunted” rankings, don’t underestimate its spectral pull. Walk the cobbled lanes on a misty January night, when the clock strikes twelve and the candle flames tremble, and you might decide Exeter’s ghosts are every bit as compelling — and perhaps just a little friendlier.

Finally, a safe 'House'?

Back at SH, we toast our history - literally - and celebrate the past inhabitants of the building. There's no need to fear friendly (or not so...) ghosts here. All of our corridors, rooms and outbuildings have been thoroughly inspected by our intuitive staff......or have they?

The Booking Truth (2025 Update)

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 06:56:31 GMT

I first wrote about the unseen power of Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) in 2021. I think it’s well worth an update.

Let me tell you - in blunt terms - about one of hospitalities greatest challenges, how you may be complicit in it - and why you might choose to choose.

Quick Click vs. a £30 Saving

It’s hardly surprising how many people default to Booking.com or other OTAs. The allure is understandable. But convenience comes at a price. Research by Which? Travel in 2020 found that guests were paying around 12% more for hotel rooms via OTAs than they would directly. Think about that: on a £250 stay, that’s roughly £30 extra you’re shelling out to save a few minutes. It’s a depressing quirk of consumer behaviour that so many travellers will “click” without realising (sometimes even despite knowing) they could get a better deal by taking a moment to contact the hotel or use its official website. We’re all shopping around for the best deal these days, so why give OTAs a free pass?

The Cost of Convenience

When you book through an OTA, you’re paying for a middleman, not for a room. OTAs charge hotels a commission fee on each booking – usually 15% to 25% of the room price (higher for ‘better visibility’ in search results). No sensible business can absorb that hit without adjusting its prices. So what do hotels do? They build the commission into the rate you see on the OTA site. In plain terms, the “great deal” on Booking.com is padded to cover at least part of the OTA’s cut. The OTAs argue that their commission goes toward marketing that benefits hotels (for example, paying Google for ads so that the hotels get more online exposure). True – OTAs spend billions on advertising – but who wins? Not you or me. The winners are the OTAs and Google.

Why OTAs Still Dominate

I expected that, as we all got more sophisticated in our on-line selves, we’d be cutting out algorithmic middlemen by now. Yet Booking.com and Expedia still dramatically dominate online hotel bookings. According to current data, roughly four out of five travellers visit an OTA at some stage of planning or booking a trip. That’s an enormous influence on where people ultimately decide to stay. How did we get here? OTAs pour eye-watering sums into online advertising to grab your attention. Case in point: during Lockdown, Booking.com slashed its Google Ads spending from $4 billion to about $1.5 billion – a drop so steep it rattled Google’s share price. Of course, as travel rebounded, that spend shot back up, with Booking and Expedia reportedly disbursing over $6 billion each on marketing in 2022 to reclaim their turf. With that kind of visibility, it’s no surprise OTAs have become the default “search engine” for hotels. We may be more digitally sophisticated than we were a decade ago, but the OTA habit remains hard to break.

Are You Really Booking Direct?

As you know by now, when you use an OTA you are paying a middleman. A clever one, who will anticipate that you suspect, somehow, that it’s better all round to book direct…and will certainly not give you any indication that you are not doing so. Unbelievably (for me) a lot of travellers genuinely believe that these platforms are just convenient windows into the hotel’s own booking system. One U.S. survey found that almost 25% of visitors mistakenly believe that booking via an OTA means their reservation is directly with the hotel’s system. Well - let me spell it out - they are not. This is what happens when you book on an OTA: you’re dealing with a virtual travel agent that sits between you and the hotel. The reservation details get forwarded to the hotel separately, often through an extranet or email – there’s no magic pipeline into the hotel’s booking engine.

This matters, quite aside from the cost to you, because it can affect your stay. For example, if issues come up, you have to go through the OTA’s customer service rather than dealing with the hotel directly. Not because we don’t want to help - but because we did not make the booking and cannot amend it! Additionally, be aware, very aware, that smaller hotels will always clock how you booked - because hospitality is about people, how you book gives us a pre-arrival clue about you. The OTAs are useful tools for browsing and comparing, but never be fooled into thinking they’re a neutral or “official” part of a hotel’s operations.

Rate Parity Clauses – The (Interesting) Legal Bit: bear with it!

At the heart of this culture of obfuscation, and the biggest obstacle to hotels in getting their message across, is the use by OTAs of “most-favoured nation” clauses, also known as rate parity clauses. These terms prohibited hotels from offering a lower price anywhere else - even on their own website - than on the OTA. In other words, if a hotel signed up with an OTA, it couldn’t undercut that OTA’s rate – even to its own loyal and regular customers. For a long time, this kept prices uniform (higher) across the board. But in recent years, regulators have been hammering away. In 2015, competition authorities in France, Italy, and Sweden secured agreements from OTAs to drop their strictest parity rules. In the UK, Booking.com and Expedia gave a ‘voluntary undertaking’ in August 2020 to loosen up on rate parity - which is when those ‘book direct’ incentives started in earnest. The real fireworks started after 2021. Germany led the charge – its Federal Cartel Office had banned Booking.com’s wider parity clauses earlier, and in 2021 Germany’s highest court upheld that even ‘narrow’ parity clauses (restricting a hotel’s own website prices) were anti-competitive. This was a landmark win for hotels… in Germany.

Meanwhile, a pan-European legal challenge was brewing. By late 2021, thousands of hotels across Europe joined forces to seek compensation from Booking.com for years of inflated commissions and lost revenue under these clauses. Today, over 10,000 European hotels are part of a coordinated lawsuit (the “Hotel Claims Alliance”) alleging that Booking.com’s enforced parity kept prices artificially high and stifled competition. It’s one of the largest-ever legal actions in the hospitality sector, backed by hotel associations across 30 countries. In a significant boost to the cause, the European Court of Justice ruled in September 2024 that Booking.com’s price-parity provisions violated EU competition law. The court rejected the OTA’s argument that these clauses were needed to prevent free-riding (ie: customers using Booking.com to find a hotel but then booking direct - which ironically is exactly what we want you to do). The writing is on the wall: under the new Digital Markets Act (DMA) in the EU, platforms like Booking.com are explicitly prohibited from imposing such parity requirements. By late 2025, Booking.com will have to remove any ‘best price’ clauses from its contracts to comply with the DMA. This is a major shift in the balance of power – hotels in Europe have legally regained the freedom to set their own prices lower on their own websites or other channels if they choose. The collective lawsuit for damages is still ongoing and could take years to conclude, but the parity policy is effectively dead. It means you should start seeing more explicit opportunities for better deals when booking directly.

The Direct Booking Advantage (Lessons from an Independent)

Given all the above, you might wonder why any hotel still uses OTAs. The reality is that they play a role for many hotels, especially smaller ones that need visibility. It’s a cost that pays for a shop window. With a USP that is truly visible and a fair wind of personal chutzpah, it’s possible for an independent to swerve OTAs - when I owned Burgh Island, we made enough noise, to a select and willing audience, to live entirely outside the OTAs universe. But you need a very loud voice now to attract new customers and small independents just don’t have the budget to fund search engine optimisation at premium level.

From a customer’s perspective, the message is clear: you will almost always get the best deal and experience by booking direct. Even if the price looks the same as on an OTA (thanks to those parity clauses, only a few - ahem - brazen hotels have advertised lower prices on their website), when you go direct you often receive better personal service. The hotel knows you’re a valued direct customer, not just a number on a third-party report. And if something goes wrong with your plans, you can talk to the hotel staff directly to sort it out.

OTAs are useful for research – but when you book, take a moment. Not only could you save money, but you’ll be directly supporting the people who make your bed. In an age where we’re re-evaluating our connections with businesses and communities, booking a room is one area where a little effort goes a long way. An hotel stay is a personal experience – you’re trusting strangers to take care of you while you sleep! Why not start that relationship in person?

Get Your Story Straight

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 13:36:22 GMT

all good hotels need a biography

“I’ve made a story, that guests can inhabit” says Phillippe Starck about his most recent project, le Maison Heler Metz. In that cross-border, tug-of-war region that my grandparents would have called mittel-europe, Starck’s playbook mashup of styles is uncannily appropriate. I love it: and I love most of all the sense of place the project as a whole - not just the architecture - brings to play in your mind.

It could be pretentious as a building of itself, apartments, offices, something of the everyday. It’s really with hospitality, transience, the business of holding your customer in a day-dream that this flight of fancy is not just possible but should be applauded. What’s better than to enter an environment, by choice not necessity, and remark “oh my, I never thought this would feel so right”.

“Maison Heler is a game on uprooted roots,” Starck says. “A symbolic construction of Lorraine, whose historical identities create an inspiring intermediate state. The fortress-like houses of the region served as the central soil for this project, and the surreal story of its owner, Manfred Heler.”

Yes: Starck, like so many of us, has created an entire narrative around the experience - one that has informed every choice in the project. The ‘owner’ of the house atop a brutalist block is fictitious Manfred Heler: and Starck has written and published his biography. OK, it’s not Dostoyovsky; Manfred Heler inherits his parents’ beautiful house. In Starck’s words: “As an orphan, he finds himself all alone in this mansion surrounded by a large park. One day, suddenly, the earth begins to tremble. He looks around and realises that he’s rising into the air. He climbs and climbs, until the shaking stops. His house has been extruded, as if a cookie-cutter had arrived from below, sliced off a piece of the earth, and mounted it vertically.”

I’ve lived the narrative experience for 25 years now, from my first steps at Burgh Island - those room names, those tales, those (were they all?) fictitious characters, flitting between the cocktail list, the bedrooms and the ball room paintings: “Join our historic guest list” was the thread - be whoever you want to be. Now, at Southernhay House, I run with the dynamics of the East India Company and the surprisingly modern sense in which the Georgians of Exeter went about their lives. A sense of place is, I think, what marks our best buildings: a sense of knowing why they are, as much as what they are, what they have been and who is living through them. In looking for a narrative, I’m not a nit-picker on actual facts; as long as they are grounded in the place, the time, the building - all is plausible and all is believable in the moment you are within the story. Of course, were this a long term relationship, you would seek something more substantial, wouldn’t you? But the beauty of hospitality is that it’s not - even our regulars come and go, you don’t need to question but accept and enjoy.

Lucky Starck with the ammo to create this Metz project from ground up: it’s taken time, as the ground was first broken in 2019, and money, since Hilton sits behind it. It’s a biggy, with 104 bedrooms and suites. Yet in a world of corporate blandness I take my hat off (reluctantly) to Curio by Hilton and doff my cap (chef’s kiss, if I may) to Phillippe Starck for making narrative so literal in the context of what should always be a step outside daily reality.

(Main image credit: Photography by Julius Hirtzberger)

What is an Hotel?

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 13:20:57 GMT

The word ‘hotel’ is triggering the British public, including me.

It’s at the end of every headline and the start of every conversation around migration. A word, a noun, an hotel, is made the crucible of a problem. As something close to my heart, I stop to consider - what broadly is understood by this thing, an hotel? Whatever the outcome of the debate and whatever the fix, migrants will still need somewhere with a roof and walls, security and the basics of food and warmth for however long it takes. Why not in an hotel? We know in our heads that not all hotels are created equal. They may guarantee a ‘good night’s sleep’ and be there when you need them, but they can still be just horrible. At the other end of the scale, in our hearts, they are dream factories; selling and delivering the idea of escape, experiences, something out of the ordinary. I am quite sure that those hotels housing migrants are stripped back to the bone; this is not a treat. Yet, and yet, the idea that these people are being pampered keeps surfacing, despite the images, stories and our basic common sense that the accommodation provided must be basic. There’s a collective and generic mythology about ‘hotel’ that’s responsible.

Across the spectrum, and in my experience until now, hotels were regarded with affection, usually comic as is our British way: from Fawlty Towers to The Grand Budapest Hotel; from Four in a Bed to The Savoy; Crossroads (dates me). Examples which are shorthand for eccentricity with a heart, splendour with graft behind it. A night in an hotel is not routine. Is that sitting behind people’s bafflement and infuriation?

A quick check-in on history: The French word hôtel, means a ‘large town house’ or ‘lodging place’. In the 18th century, hôtel particulier was a nice city mansion; an association with grandeur took root - although these were still then private dwellings. By the 19th century, ‘hotel’ in Britain meant more than just a room for the night; it meant service, food, and refinement. Unlike ‘inns’, ‘lodgings’ or ‘boarding houses’, hotels were a step up the social ladder. They were places of choice, rather than necessity. Today, an hotel retains that aura of luxury, despite the rise of budget chains and functionality. Premier Inn and Travelodge have chosen their branding and are clever with managing market expectations accordingly.

When the concept of generosity, hospitality and good vibrations; an hotel in it’s true sense, rubs up against the opposite a vacuum will form. We sense the reality of basic accommodation, en masse, for months on end, with no choice or autonomy, but we still see the word ‘hotel’ with its shiny, special connotations.

Because there’s a word that goes with ‘hotel’ like - any perfect combination you can name. It’s ‘guest’ - part of the DNA of hotel. The connotations of ‘being invited’ are obvious. A guest is an independent consumer, a chooser. A guest’s choice ultimately determines the value of an hotel. When a guest isn’t a guest, where does it leave ‘hotel’ in the public imagination? Or in the imagination of people risking their lives to find shelter in something shiny and special at a distance? The perception of choice, luxury, aspiration is projected onto the naked fact of a building, but it’s only what happens inside the building that breaths life into it. Leisure and choice is the opposite of asylum.

As Sir Trevor Philips has just noted: people have celebrated weddings, anniversaries, family gatherings in the very places that are now housing migrants - no matter that the guts of ‘hotel’ have been eviscerated to accommodate them; it feels like subversion of their narrative in the public consciousness.

Did these optics pass over the head of government in 2019, when it leaned on hotels as a stop-gap for housing asylum seekers? On paper, it looks pragmatic: hotels were available and flexible and even more so 2020-onwards. These buildings now have a guaranteed government contract of 100% occupancy, virtually zero F&B costs, vastly inflated tariffs (uncommercial since supply and demand are non existent), zero commissions and a vat concession. This is the opposite of the organic, fluid, seasonal, people-oriented and service-driven culture that is so vital to hospitality. This is a Frankenstein idea of ‘hotel’.

Hospitality Futures

Sun, 24 Aug 2025 08:31:54 GMT

has the uk got it in it?

Something has been bothering me a lot in recent months. As I get older and wiser, with more hospitality years under my belt now than legal ones, my thoughts turn to legacy and the next generation of little me’s. Here I am, working with a handful of professionals; we’ve been a team for more than a decade - almost two in a couple of cases. We joke about working it with the same panache when we’re 80. At this point in time, we may well be - because new blood is not running through the veins of UK hospitality.

I have written, spoken and generally banged on about the reasons for this until I risk being caricatured as an old colonel, mistily eulogising the golden period between 2004 and 2016 when we could take our pick of the clever, chic Europeans who wanted to work in hotels and bars over here and perfect their English. We’re past that now; that die is cast, and it was only a short period, anyway. The underlying malaise remains: why do we have such an ambivalent attitude to hospitality on this island?

In France, Italy, Greece - you’ve seen for yourself this summer - hospitality is a profession. You see older workers, small business owners, sexy Gen-Z serving you with pride and passion. Yes: even those waiters in Paris who looked at you *in that way* were doing so out of pride in their job, albeit with distain for your accent or attire.

Over here: with honourable exceptions of course, there’s a numbness about waiting staff in bars and restaurants, hotel receptions. At best they get the job done, and the customer is left feeling vaguely sad without quite knowing why.

I’m working on a theory that our cultural distain for hospitality (I mean the delivery end; we so much love to be sharp on the receiving end, as I shall get to later on) is entirely due to the fact that we have never had a proper revolution. The class system here is ingrained in our psyche. Rip-roaring costume dramas don’t help with the notion that looking after people is a valid career choice. Much as I love Downton Abbey it ain’t real, and times have moved on. We don’t do this because we have no choice, because our parents did, because we have nowhere to live - we do this because we can make a decent living from giving people a lovely experience.

Now to the receiving end: because hospitality is so close to life - our aim, after all, is to create a special environment for stuff that you would otherwise do anyway - some people feel that they already know how to do this. They have a home, they have four walls, they eat, they drink - what’s so hard about what we do, then? There’s something about payment for food, bed, four walls and wifi that disrupts normal social boundaries: at some level it might be that you even resent it. There’s a part of us that needs to establish hierarchy, and when you’re paying money for something - that’s an obvious power-position.

One of the fundamental tenets of hospitality is the lovely phrase ‘mi casa es tu casa’. I resist this: what we provide specifically isn’t your house - it’s something fashioned to give you a break from your house.

And yet: the exchange of money for hospitality is a muddy area. Yes: you are capable of making a bed, cooking breakfast, pouring a glass of wine. Yes: you have chosen to put yourself in the hands of someone who done this, professionally, for the last 10 years.

Are you one of those are people who don’t ‘see’ what we do as a profession at all, even when you are literally standing within or it in front of them, because it’s just the stuff of day to day life? Because that’s why your children aren’t looking at hospitality as a valid and dynamic career choice, where the opportunities are there for the taking, there’s a dusting of magic and the prospects are so much better than WFH waiting for AI to come knocking on the door.

Unpicking Locks

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 08:02:22 GMT

a sign of the times

I looked up in Waitrose and saw myself, foreshortened, hyper-pigmented and looking chunky - on camera. The bastion of decency and, well, smug poshness now has CCTV in its aisles.

It made me feel slightly better but also bitter about the latest development at Southernhay House: locks on the downstairs loos. This horror (and there is no chic way to style a key pad) has been forced on us by the number of people walking in and heading straight to the loos, using them to the full before walking straight out again. The second time housekeeping had to make an unscheduled call out was enough.

I was reminded of my strong feelings about loo-locks this morning when listening to a large retailer talking about his anti-shoplifting precautions, “it’s just a fact of modern retail, sadly” he said.

It is. And sadly. But why? And why Waitrose, Southernhay House and the retailer of branded sportswear with margin fatigue on the radio? Shoplifting has been around for ages - so why has it suddenly exploded? I’m not talking nicking out of desperation, which I am not condoning, obvs. Shoplifting has morphed into a secondary financial market of its own; goods are sold on via market stores, special commissions and facebook groups. There’s a hustle to be made where repercussions are remote and the crime doesn’t ‘hurt’ anyone. Only this week, a Police Commissioner said it was "not worth prosecuting" shoplifters, because of the chaotic backlog of the court systems. No repercussions, a ready market and no visible victim - why not?

Were we at leafy Southernhay the last to acknowledge the problem? Were we so cocooned that we snobbishly thought shoplifting (and I include here the theft of space, water, lighting, employee time that comes with use of a private loo intended for paying customers) was a ‘high street’ problem? Well, no longer; it's here on our literal doorstep.

There’s a mood in 2025, which means that a business which appears to be functioning at a premium level is fair game and can take the hit.

Which it can’t: and don’t take out your tiny violin for me at this point. Running a functioning premium business is really, really hard work, and more than it ever has been. It’s maintaining the gloss with full-time commitment from the owner/CEO often with a new or greater degree of hands-on involvement. It’s constant dedication and drive from every single member of staff. It’s trying to keep prices stable in the face of spiralling costs—utilities, suppliers, insurance, regulations. You know the list because you’re probably doing it too: we’re just the same.

It’s also doing it with a smile on your face, because - hey - hospitality!

Little by little, over the past decade the social contract which I have always thought to be especially British has been eroded and this year it seems to be generally acknowledged that it has broken down entirely. I grieve for it: I still try and live by it.

We can look around, nod a bit, and blame UK lockdown politicians for creating a nation of self-regulating, self-pleasing individuals where you are the king of your own world. We can look at the internet and say, ‘of course - once you are detached from human contact the consequences are obvious’. We can blame immigration for non-specific ‘overcrowding’ or very specific ‘otherness’ and social media for amplifying both of these.

There’s a kernel in all of that, but there’s also a big omission - which is that we are all complicit in the society we exist in. We’re an intrinsic part of it, not an observer. Small behaviours in your own environment make as much difference as big political gestures, and can be far more effective. If you feel disenfranchised from the political, you can still be empowered by the personal.

This is the country famous for queueing, for please and thank you, for curries and chips, for democracy, for goodness sake (even those last three words are quintessentially British). The Brits were famous for more than our stiff upper lips; it was a sense of fair play and decency. Words that I'm almost embarrassed to write because they sound so quaint - but like many a good old fashioned phrase, I intend to reclaim what they mean and unlock those doors as soon as possible.

A Studio in the Sky

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 08:03:02 GMT

In which an open plan office becomes a luxe studio

“Luxury lies in the detail, not in extravagance.”

— Terence Conran

I’ve made a new living space!

High atop the Georgian crescents of Exeter, on the top floor of Number Nine Southernhay West , I’ve created somewhere lovely to live — from what was once a gorgeous but also, in the current climate, overlooked open-plan office.

I thought it would be fun to document the design process. Then I realised how much of that process is intuitive. So this is my attempt to articulate it.

First off: can I ask you to dwell, as it were - a little, on the difference between a space for living full time in and an hotel bedroom? Forget those articles on ‘how to create a boutique hotel bedroom at home’, because why would you? An hotel bedroom has several, very specific intentions - and storage of your entire wardrobe, lighting for early morning starts, space for a bit of personal junk around the sink as well as the bed, are not within the remit. Nor do hotel suites need a hoover, mop….and kitchen.

Getting back into the residential mindset was refreshing:

“A house is a machine for living in. Baths, sun, hot water, cold water, warmth at will, conservation of food, hygiene, beauty in the sense of good proportion.”

- ‘le Corbusier’, 1923

The project had classical bones (as they all do). With its attic-apex ceilings, panoramic light from both south- and north-facing windows, and a rare, intimate view of Exeter’s Gothic cathedral, the space was an invitation to rethink how we can live beautifully in small footprints.

When we bought the building, in 2019, the ceiling height was about at my hairline. The views were hidden, carved into three tight offices. Naturally, we tore out the partitions and lifted the roof to a full, glorious height.

Today’s challenge came in conversion to a living space: how to zone a luminous, open space into areas for living, sleeping, eating and bathing — without losing the sense of air, elegance, and movement.

Bathroom and kitchen positions are largely dictated by pipes. Bathroom privacy is a given (though let it be luxe!). The sleeping area required more thought: it had to feel softly enclosed, restful — without clunky feature walls or doomed-to-fail sliding panels.

The 3am solution? Simply use IKEA’s longest wardrobe as a partition: storage on one side, sanctuary on the other. From there, the rest of the apartment’s flow fell naturally into place. Sometimes, you need to sit on a problem and your mind will just quietly go about its business…

…it knows that we thrive in spaces that balance openness with retreat. Our brains crave stimulation — and also security. The choreography of thresholds is what turns a layout into a living place.

The details are not the details. They make the design.”

— Charles Eames

Every project needs a moment of surprise. I reserve 10% of the budget for the details that deliver “Ooff!” — a touch that is unexpected, but right.

In this studio, hand-cut Moroccan zellige tiles bring rough edges and an earthy gloss to the kitchen, beginning a cultural story that continues in the bathroom. Kitchen units are upgraded with reclaimed or hand-crafted wooden tops. Lighting shifts by zone — sculpting mood as much as illuminating space and the light fittings themselves are classic 20th century icons.

I choose furnishings and wall art not just for utility, but for narrative. Motifs can be subtly repeated, reflected and colours complimentary without fading to grey.

“Light creates ambience and feel of a place, as well as the expression of a structure.”

— le Corbusier

One of the apartment’s greatest assets is its double aspect: light flows from both the south and north, catching walls, ceilings, even doorframes in a changing show.

It also supports health. We all know that natural light regulates our circadian rhythms, boosts mood, and supports clarity of thought. In compact living, light is luxury. Shutters (or curtains, if you have the space to use them) need to clear the windows as much as possible and practical.

“Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.”

— Frank Gehry

And then, there’s the view. From the studio’s rear window, the detailed stonework of Exeter’s Gothic Cathedral rises in close intimacy — a daily reminder of craftsmanship, and patience.

Circling back on the distinction I have made between full time living and hotel rooms, they meet at the crucial point of a radical attentiveness to human experience. Whether for a night or a year, your space needs to be somewhere not just to stay but to inhabit.

MartiniGPT

Sun, 01 Jun 2025 07:51:32 GMT

is there a future for ai in hospitality?

I went through CdG airport a few weeks ago and was served a very nice Minuty rose by a charming (if taciturn) robot. It didn’t judge my 11 am order, didn’t make conversation, didn’t smile and didn’t spill a drop. Is that our future?

Surely, you say, hospitality is the ultimate face to face job; you want your Martini made ‘your way’, your omelette without salt, a bedroom that has been tried and tested by human designers (already unusual in itself). I agree: I feel like a freakish lone voice, preaching the value of a career in hospitality to my friends. My truth, as I preach it, is that they are mad not to encourage their kids into a sector which by its nature is resilient to the tsunami of AI. But while Pierre (as I call my ‘bot) is a literal symbol of AI at work in my field, the fate of your future downtime was sealed some years’ ago. Human contact is a rare commodity; access to almost everything - including romance and in some respects actual intimacy - is online. On the plus side, doesn’t this make actual contact, because scarce, valuable? If I can bottle the best of this in my business then won’t people seek it out?

Pierre made me think more deeply about my smug argument and what will be our future; is hospitality unique in being all about people and, if so, do we value this enough for it to survive? The answers are, I think, respectively, no and (hopefully) yes. Survival is always adaptive and our old world has already well and truly been swallowed up: for better and for worse, because there were plenty of weaknesses in 21st century hospitality, as well it’s punchy strengths. In a truly Darwinian sense, the rise of adaptive AI should refine the best (strongest) qualities of the hotels, bars and restaurants that remain on the landscape.

Take AI at its most basic: we’ve become a nation of remote eaters and drinkers. Are we so hungry, so time-poor that we need to feed ourselves through an App? Well, yes: it’s cheaper for starters because the cost of production and delivery is lower. It needs no advance planning. No one is going to judge what you order - it’s Pierre all over. Food is fuel, wherever you get your fix. Your App of choice will get to know what you like, share that information around, and so your gastronomic horizons will gradually narrow, maybe without you noticing.

Which leaves any bar and restaurant, dependent as it is on people smelling, seeing, eating and talking about food made by people, where? A niche treat? Breakfast at Tiffanies, or Tea at The Ritz? When you hand over your coat and go to the table, is AI left at the door? How did you even hear about the place? Chat GPT right? AI has been manipulating your hospitality choices for years: look how easy booking.com makes it - a little universe shining a light in your tastes, budget and plans. It’s not really autonomous though; it still needs to feed off your data. While booking.com lurks in the background, the economic burden about to hit us in April will have the unintended consequence of boosting AI in hospitality into areas we had not previously intended to go…..just yet. Look at the signals coming from big scale retail: cutting hours, cutting part time jobs. Jobs that if and when they can be done by AI, will be. And autonomous AI is heading your way fast, if Jeff Bezos’ investment portfolio is any kind of sign.

Any hospitality business that doesn’t already populate it’s digital life is on the back foot, or is making a deliberate point from a very secure financial position. The art of nurturing your footprint in social media must be subtle and aimed squarely at your customer. But still all of that alchemy is aimed at getting the customer to walk through the door: and what they find when they get there. We still rely on a tangible product for flesh and blood people.

Like me, you’re probably just grateful for someone who smiles and knows their stuff when you do go ‘out, out’. I am keenly aware of the vicarious responsibility of being a customer: the fewer times I go ‘out, out’, the more often I order ‘in, in’ the more I perpetuate the myth that hospitality isn’t important, that jobs in this sector are something we could live without, and that going ‘out, out’ is a milestone event.

Talking of jobs: Pierre was a bit of knowing French fun, but did you know that you can have your own Pierre made flesh? Dating Apps exist for casual hospitality shifts. If you need an extra pair of hands on any given night, you can put out a shout and, like a taxi, someone will come along. The taxi may get you from A to B but it won’t have more than the basic knowledge, or investment in being there. Nor will it have any statutory employment rights, by the way. This is an extreme example: in my world, like Uber itself, uber-waiter hasn’t yet come to Exeter. Nevertheless, standards of service in hospitality have been fundamentally diluted by many factors recently - and AI without doubt has accelerated this. For an employer, the challenges of investment in training and retention are greater than ever - and about to hit another brick wall.

Put bluntly, come April smaller businesses less able to withstand massive increases in payroll will shave all the hours and jobs they can to protect their most valuable (highest performing, longest term) staff. As a customer, every part of the guest journey that does not require human contact will be automated. The ‘bots will deal with your booking, your pre-stay requests, your check in and check-out. Yikes but not yikes - we’re already familiar with the process. I cling to the idea that hospitality is about the personal, the real. There will be a dramatic divide between the everyday and the bespoke - and we’ll have to acknowledge that bespoke comes at a price, and isn’t an everyday option for the customer. Yet humans need to feel human; it’s the only thing we have that fully automated AI does not. This is why I keep the wheels turning and why I love this business. Look your wait staff in the eyes when you next order in a bar or restaurant and think about that.

Face-time Tour

deborah@southernhayhouse.com — Tue, 27 May 2025 16:03:01 GMT

The art at SH has been selected to tell the history of the House through the eyes of its first owner, William Kirkpatrick , and to complement the eclectic and quirky style of the hotel. While its all got to look cool and sexy, our higher aim is to wrap you in a narrative that feels positive, interesting, off-beat and purposeful. At SH, I want you to feel connections in everything: the history of the building, its inhabitants, its place in the City and simply people that have intrigued us. The pictures are a starting point for conversations.

Here’s a quick walk through the main characters downstairs:

The Bar:

At the entrance, a young David Bowie and Barbra Streisand (this latter, taken by Cecil Beaton), both off-beat 20th century icons. A recent addition, Nina Simone in her early 'black panther' fierce-ness.

In the snug: random 60s starlets, specifically chosen as anonymous. Because you don’t have to be famous to be on the wall at SH (or to work here, lol). I wanted to make the point that a picture can make everyone - anyone - interesting. And that the photographer, always unseen, is as important as the subject. It’s not dissimilar to what we do with hospitality.

From the Wine Rack to the right of the Bar:

Norma Jean (young Marilyn Monroe) specifically before she was famous. Babe Payley (a New York socialite and friend of Truman Capote in the ‘40s) photographed by Horst P Horst Studio; one of the most famous pre and post war studios. Above Babe, another anon male starlet, and to the right, young Marianne Faithful. My favourite beautiful boy Yuri Gagarin (the 1st astronaut in space, 1961) the script below loosely reads: “from the bird Sputnik, the planet earth looks beautiful”. The poster itself was bought in a Moscow flea market in 1989. By the entrance to the Club Room, Ali McGraw (photographed by David Bailey). The woman hugging her knees who looks like a young Ava Gardener is not her; she’s another unknown starlet. British stage actress Joan Plowright has the cute pixie cut (below another unknown starlet). Everyone loves the sexy unknown beach starlet with adoring foot fetishist above whom is Gig Young, a “second-lead” actor of some flamboyance: sadly, best known for killing his wife and then himself, after a lifetime of disappointment, alcohol and drug use.

Note the inscriptions behind the bar: on the right “I’d rather live a day as a tiger than a lifetime as a sheep”, an aphorism ascribed to Tipu Sultan (the “Tiger of Mysore”) a powerful Mogul warrior and thorn in the side of the East India Company, with whom our Kirkpatrick was rather obsessed, and whose letters he transcribed and published after Tipu’s death, in 1799. On the left, an excerpt from a letter written by Kirkpatrick to his close friend John Kennaway. The Kennaway family home was (and still is) Escot House, just outside Exeter (bought in 1794 for £26,000) and it’s thought this relationship was the reason Kirkpatrick chose to make Exeter his home.

The Green Room:

Starting by the entrance, from right: Anthony Bourdain, ironically the only hospitality professional commemorated on the walls of SH. To the left, the current cover of Time Magazine, featuring President Zelesky and 'the spirit of Ukraine'. Having welcomed several refugees to Team SH, I can confirm this spirit is alive and kicking. Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman give iconic pose in a publicity shot for “The Graduate”. An antique Indian wall relief casts shadows and gives texture, relating to the garden behind. The Original Blade Runner poster picks up an Art Deco vibe. By the wood burner, Mick Jagger above, Nico below (most of you won’t have heard of the Andy Warhol muse and signer in The Velvet Underground, but you know her work). The wall lights are original Art Deco, from my time at Burgh Island. A saturnine Richard Burton broods on your way out.

The Club Room:

Starting by the door, from the left: a young Gladys Cooper (again, before she was famous; this was a screen test). You may not have heard of her, but Gladys is far from anonymous. She had a long career on stage and screen, as actor and producer throughout the first part of the last century, shifting from the comfortable English middle classes to Hollywood in 1940 and moving easily from ingenue to character as she aged. Apollo and Diana on the sideboard (repro Victorian busts) set the 19th century “Club Room” tone. To the right, a poster for “ Delayed Gratification ” - a quarterly “slow news” publication, well worth looking up/out for/subscribing to. This is a limited edition print by contemporary artist Shepard Fairey for the first edition of DG. The mirror over the fireplace is heavy duty Austro-Hungarian Empire kitsch, while Prunella, the stuffed pigeon on a unicycle to its right, reflects the Victorian-noir-steam-punk vibe of the room. Josephine Baker is here as a tribute to the roaring 20s (she’s ex-Burgh Island, again) and to her importance in chipping away at racial barriers and ingrained prejudice. Jo Baker’s life and journey from New York to Paris can be seen as the mirror image of Gladys' journey in the opposite direction. Our butterflies are genuinely old but the label attributing them to Kitty Kirkpatrick (a real person - William’s niece, who he brought up in this house) is a flight of fancy. The 1950s Wallpaper design “Teatro” is by Italian graphic designer Piero Fornasetti.

Reception:

Most of this room is dedicated to William Kirkpatrick and 1805: the year of the Battle of Trafalgar. Kirky wasn’t involved in Trafalgar, but Exeter was a key staging post for the messenger who brought news of victory back to Westminster and there’s a stone commemorating this outside the Council Offices. The immediate significance of 1805 is that this was the year SH was finished, and Kirkpatrick moved in.

Facing the entrance door, to your left: limited edition stamps commemorating Admiral Lord Nelson and a reproduction of the “scrolling map” of the route into Exeter from Bristol. Travel maps used to be illustrated like this, on a long vellum scroll that was wound up and unrolled as needed. A fleet manifest from the Battle of Trafalgar hangs next to illustrated manoeuvres from the Battle and more stamps. I was intrigued to find an original print of Kirkpatrick’s map of Nepal; he was apparently the first Westerner to enter the country. Kirkpatrick’s nickname - “the Orientalist” reflects, in particular, his expertise in native South Indian dialects which was crucial to the East India Company. Over the mantelpiece hangs Kirky himself; this is a reproduction of the original portrait which hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Dublin. For good measure, Kirkpatrick is accompanied by two unknown officers (who survived) the Battle of Waterloo. Three small etchings finish the history tour: a map of Exeter in 1805, the Cathedral from the same folio and a depiction of the local Bath House - a reminder that there was no domestic water or sanitation in Exeter until at least the 1830s, and the swanky Georgian residents of Southernhay would all have had to visit the Bath House daily.

The Entrance/Corridor:

At the foot of the stairs: Oscar Wilde - why not; there’s the Bodmin Moor connection and he’s an absolute alternative hero, also commemorated in our Opium Room, in Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations of his work. Oscar hangs above a poster from Art Week 2016; SH was an early sponsor of all things arty in Exeter and I still like to keep an eye on this scene. Halfway up the stairs, butterflies and case from the RAMM collection, with an installation of “fly away” naturalist book pages. Back on the corridor, first on your right, a young Thomas Paine, the English born, US naturalised political thinker who was an ardent supporter of American Independence and anti-slavery. It wasn’t only the Battle of Trafalgar going down around this time; the French revolution (1789) had sparked all sorts of ideas around equality and the rest, which contrasted markedly with the prevailing English aristo/Empire loving classes (although I give Kirkpatrick and his intellectual crew credit for being more liberal in their views than the board brush of history might paint). Anyway, Paine wrote, amongst other things, “The Rights of Man” (1791) which was an absolute flashpoint and would have got him arrested if he hadn’t already been halfway to France by the time Parliament banned the book and ordered his arrest for inciting “bloody revolution”. This pamphlet was blatantly in favour of republicanism, popular education, relief for the poor, income tax – you get it; the English ruling classes were having none of that. At the entrance to the ladies’ loos is an etching by William Blake: “Europe supported by Africa and America”. Contrary to its immediate impact, this is very much not a racist trope, see here . In the gents’ loo lurks the Prince Regent, later George IV, reflecting the period of the house’s first occupation and the English ruling class made flesh. In the ladies’ loos is the frontispiece for “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792) by Mary Wollstonecraft (illustrated by the same William Blake). This book was a riposte to Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, whose revolutionary zeal omitted to mention women – and to various threads of philosophy around the French Revolution, which sidelined half the population, although as we know adopted bare-breasted Marianne as it’s symbol, quelle surprise, comment français!

Private Dining Room:

From the left: a large antique Indian sideboard in need of some repair. Above this, original CoD (Cash on Delivery) receipts from the spice trade with India during the Empire - you can imagine the Indian clerks embellishing these in their free time and competing for the fanciest illustration. The next two portraits are unknown couples but intended to symbolise both Kirkpatrick’s relationship with an Indian woman (as well as his thing for John Kennaway, he had an English wife too) and, interestingly, his brother James. James Achilles Kirkpatrick was seduced by Indo-Persian culture when he was posted to the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad. James fell in love with a beautiful Hyderbadi noblewoman called Khair-un-Nissa. Reader, he married her - which meant converting to Islam and fully adopting the culture. This was unique in the East India Company at the time; English officers never went legit. Kitty Kirkpatrick of the butterflies was their daughter, also a beauty, who returned to live with her uncle after her dad’s death and “passed” as English, being baptised in 1805 at the age of 3. Kitty married into the Kennaway family in 1829, well after her uncle’s death - it’s nice to think of the happy and public union between the two families at last (and it was, apparently, a very happy marriage). The gorgeous swooning woman on the far right of the windows might well be Kitty’s mother, Khair-un-Nissa herself…. . The statues are original 19th century wedding statues. To complete the SH circle, as a representative of both the East India Company and the Nizam of Hyderbad, James was present at the aftermath of the Battle of Seringapatam, where Tipu Sultan met his death in 1799. James took the philosophical letters of Tipu Sultan (who was something of a Sufi mystic as well as warrior) from his tent and passed these to his brother, William. James died in Calcutta in – you guessed it – 1805.

RIP 2BD*

Sat, 10 May 2025 14:02:17 GMT

*Two Bottles Down

Regarding the sad decline of the business lunch....

I’ve been out of the corporate loop for all of this century. When I left the City, we chuckled at Americans who indulged in a risqué glass of wine with their steak to celebrate the end of a gruelling 3 month deal. How we smirked as we popped the champagne and tickled our chips with ketchup on a Friday afternoon in EC1. I’ve now been on the supply side of the business lunching for a couple of decades and I can safely say that champagne and chips are no longer on the agenda. I couldn’t pinpoint the date on which the deal-makers and breakers decided that a shared bottle of wine at lunch was suspect, that leaving your desk in daylight was a red flag, and that the only acceptable form of work-based interaction was agenda-driven and time-boxed. I’d hazard a guess it has only crystallised in this country in the last couple of years, since post-lockdown saw a brief, dizzying outpouring of hedonism that quickly sobered up.

Farewell, then: the business lunch is close to dying—and with it, something vital.

Not just our city-centre lunch trade at Southernhay house and elsewhere, and not just the feeling of community that leaving your desk for an hour engenders, but the intangible glue of professional life: trust, rapport, and the alchemy that happens when people relax in each other’s company. In the UK, corporate entertaining has been pared back dramatically. For understandable economic reasons—but the loss runs deeper than short-term budget lines.

Tech has accelerated this, not least the influence of tech culture. Silicon bro’s model of virtue is one of extreme fasting, protein shakes, walking meetings, and ‘CEO bodies’. If it doesn’t serve a measurable outcome, it’s wasteful. I don’t need to spell out the pernicious consequences on your waistline and social life of WFH here, either… that fridge is not your friend, still less a future connection.

Business is operating under a new kind of puritanism.

Virtue, in many modern workplaces, looks like restraint. Fun is frivolous. Drinking at lunch? Dangerous. Long conversations that might not lead to a deal? Indulgent. The business lunch once allowed people to feel their way into working relationships. Now, you optimise. You calculate. You avoid ambiguity. And, increasingly, you eat alone. The ‘work-life balance’ so hyped as desirable, also means that, somehow, if you’re enjoying yourself, you can’t be ‘working’ (or not hard enough).

“Work is more fun than fun” said Noel Coward

I’m in the happy place of spending my time on stuff that is fun, 87.5% of the time. Joy is not the enemy of work. It’s the foundation of good work. Relationships built in relaxed moments are the ones that survive pressure. Deals struck at lunch often succeed because people trust each other. And creativity—true, risky, collaborative creativity—does not happen to schedule.

My take-away? Cutting your business lunch is a false economy.

You may save money. But at the cost of losing something harder to quantify: cohesion, goodwill, friendship. Spending time with people is very rarely wasted. It’s the difference between a functional team and a flourishing one. Testing your corporate strengths as a physical team, in an informal setting, can strengthen workplace bonds - and sometimes make you friends for life!

It’s time to reclaim joy as a professional asset, and maybe rename ‘marketing’ on your balance sheet. Let’s recognise that when people eat together, drink together, and laugh together, they’re not wasting time. They’re investing in something deeper than a transaction.

So: shall we do lunch?

Vanishing Appetite

Mon, 14 Apr 2025 14:29:27 GMT

On Ozempic, Soma, and What We’re Really Losing

The developed world is entering the age of less: less hunger, less indulgence, less understanding of food. As a consequence: less conversation, fewer misunderstandings, less laughter, less mess, less random stuff, for better or worse.

At the same time, and ironically, material consumption is booming. Our ‘stuff’ is more and more to be delivered, codified, curated and displayed. Our social lives are lived online, filtered before seen and shared indiscriminately, rather than with people we really want to connect with.

Drugs like Ozempic work by making you stop wanting things. Precisely, food and alcohol. For many, this is a gift. But there’s a cost we’re just starting to talk about—the fading of appetite as a human experience.

Obviously, GLP-1 drugs can be life-changing. The problem is not medical use, but our cultural embrace of appetite suppression as aspiration. We are treating hunger as something to outwit. It’s been like that for the whole of my life - and now, it seems, an easy fix is here.

What happens to a society that no longer wants to eat? When you unwind the economic consequences (let alone the philosophical ones) our whole shared experience becomes a mirage.

Appetite Is More Than Hunger

Appetite isn’t just about calories—it’s about longing. The desire to taste, to try, to experience. Appetite drives us not only to the table but toward life, and propels us forward. When you suppress your body’s desires, what else do you cancel?

In the classical world, appetitus wasn’t shameful—it was elemental. The urge to reach, to strive for something just out of grasp is what animates us. To eat well, to drink deeply, to sit at a table with others—this has always been a marker of vitality. Now we are told that to strive for nothing, to cancel wanting, is not only healthy, but virtuous - and gives us status.

A meal is not just food. It is ritual. It is kinship. It is culture. We meet over meals. We reconcile over them. We plan revolutions between bites (or we used to!). Every culture has elaborate customs around shared eating. Even the phrase breaking bread implies a kind of vulnerability—a sharing of the self. Before utensils were commonplace, bread was usually the medium for eating: breaking bread was a communal ceremony to start the meal.

To be unable to eat, rather to no longer wish to, is to step outside the communal circle. You’ve invited the party guest who sips water and eats half a radish. You don’t mind them, exactly. But they change the vibe.

Food writer M.F.K. Fisher said, “Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.” What happens, then, when we no longer indulge in it at all?

The 16th-century essayist Montaigne saw no virtue in excessive restraint. For him, pleasure—eating, drinking, laughing—was something that rooted us in truth. “Le plus grand chose du monde, c’est de savoir être à soi.” (The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.) To eat with joy was to possess oneself fully; to share food was to belong more deeply to the world. The dinner table, in his writing, was not a place of guilt, but of trust, companionship, and liberty.

Anthony Bourdain brings this home in a modern sense: “Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyway. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride.”

A Social Life around Salad (dressing on the side)

Imagine: you’re invited out dinner. You arrive and sit down at the table, but you’re not hungry. You’re never hungry anymore. Your friends order three courses and a bottle of wine, laughing. They talk loudly. They ask for extra bread. You are… patient. Distant. Efficient.

Who are your dinner companions now? Others like you: precise, measured, fasting. Socialising not around sharing, but around discipline. The dinner table becomes an uneasy transaction, not a theatre. You speak less. You go home early. The night shrinks. Throughout our cities, restaurants are closing earlier, people are shutting their front doors (literally) when the sun sets.

And as we eat less, we talk less. Less chance of wandering conversation, chance encounters, arguments about art or politics, or spontaneous plans for after-dinner drinks. The body doesn’t just lose weight—it loses chaos, spontaneity, warmth. And these are things that culture, and connection, often depend on.

Don’t forget: society is a body that needs feeding, as well as your bones and flesh. Think about things that are described in very ‘bodily’ terms: a ‘body’ of work, the ‘body’ politic, a corpus of knowledge….

The Thinness of Virtue

There is something profound about the way Ozempic fits into the modern morality of the body. It offers an illusion of effortlessness. Thinness, without struggle. Virtue, without work. Answers without accountability.

GLP-1 drugs reinforce my generation’s deeply ingrained notion that fat is failure. They allow us to reframe suppression as success.

This is not new. The philosopher Michel Foucault wrote that power often operates by making people discipline themselves—by internalising control. He explored how modern societies maintain power not by force, but by teaching individuals to regulate themselves. “Le pouvoir s’exerce plutôt qu’il ne se possède.” (Power is exercised rather than possessed.). With appetite-suppressing drugs, we may be entering a new phase of that control: the silent body. The obedient body. The empty stomach as an aspirational state. A quiet body = a compliant citizen.

A Hungerless Future

In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley imagined a population pacified by Soma—a drug that dulled pain, quieted rebellion, and produced a pleasant, unthinking contentment. Ozempic is the cousin of Soma. A drug that makes us easier to manage—because we want less. When people want less, they question less. They challenge less. They go home early. Bars and restaurants close their doors.

Maybe the question we should be asking is not how do we eat less, but what are we really hungry for? And what will we all become when the answer is: “nothing at all.”

Spinning It Back

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 14:53:15 GMT

Women, Work, and the Margins of the Market

In the early medieval landscape of England, the hum of the wool trade was a familiar rhythm—woven into the very life of rural communities.

In Devon’s uplands and valleys, sheep grazed on common pasture, and their fleece passed from field to hearth in a quiet but complex domestic economy. Much of this labour was done by women. They washed, carded, spun, wove, and dyed—often in communal or household settings—forming the invisible infrastructure behind one of England’s most lucrative export trades. And yet, when we speak of trade in the medieval period, women are largely absent from the record. Their names are missing from charters, guild rolls, and merchant accounts. This is not simply an archival omission; it reflects a broader systemic exclusion that emerged as markets and economies formalised.

Beginning in the 10th and 11th centuries and accelerating in the High Middle Ages, towns like Exeter received royal and seigneurial market charters—legal instruments that allowed towns to hold regular markets and occasional fairs. These charters were part of a broader shift from informal, village-based exchange systems to regulated urban trade. Markets became centralised, codified, and monetised. Weekly market days, once organic extensions of rural life, became juridical spaces, embedded in a system of tolls, rents, and permissions. This process coincided with the emergence of guilds: closed, male-dominated institutions that governed entry into skilled trades, controlled pricing, and set quality standards. Women, who had long been the primary processors of wool and linen, found themselves increasingly pushed to the periphery. The very tasks they had historically mastered were now classified as “low-value” or “domestic”—while the more visible, public-facing aspects of the trade (such as cloth-finishing, exporting, and merchanting) were reserved for men.

Importantly, this shift wasn’t neutral. It reflected a deliberate gendering of economic space, in which public commerce was masculinised, and female economic agency was systematically diminished. Women’s work continued—behind doors, in backyards, within households—but their presence was stripped of formal recognition, legal autonomy, and financial leverage. In many rural communities, female independence itself became suspect. The figure of the older, unmarried woman—often a healer, spinner, or midwife—was increasingly recast not as a contributor to the local economy, but as a threat to male order. The rise of market regulation, land enclosures, and professionalisation in the early modern period maps uneasily—but strikingly—onto the rise of witchcraft accusations.

Fast forward to the present, and a curious reversal appears. In the world of farmers’ markets, craft fairs, and micro-enterprise, it is often women—young and old—who are most visible behind the stalls. They are growers, weavers, bakers, potters, cheesemakers. They are reviving traditional crafts, forming collectives, and reimagining rural economies with a strong ethos of sustainability, locality, and creativity. At first glance, this might appear to be a kind of historical correction: the return of the cottage industry, this time on women’s terms. But the picture is more complicated.

While these women are reclaiming space in the practice of trade, the structure of trade remains largely unchanged. Who owns the land on which the markets sit? Who sets licensing fees, insurance requirements, and stall placements? Who manages the distribution of resources, funding, and visibility? These questions often point back to local councils, commercial landlords, and regulatory bodies—spaces still disproportionately dominated by men. Moreover, the language of “independence” and “localism”—so often associated with these markets—can conceal the very real challenges faced by women traders: economic precarity, lack of benefits, childcare burdens, housing insecurity, and the pressures of branding and self-promotion in a world of ingrained stereotypes.

In this sense, the marketplace is both site of possibility and site of constraint. Women have returned to it not because they were welcomed back, but because they have made space for themselves—again. And while their presence is more visible now than in the past, visibility alone is not the same as power. To walk through a thriving summer market in England is to encounter a form of economic life that is rich in memory—one that echoes with the labour of women who once spun and dyed and bartered at the margins of legitimacy. Their names may not be preserved in merchant rolls or guild minutes, but their work formed the foundation of trade.

Today’s markets are full of their descendants: women working with craft and care, rebuilding not just businesses but micro-economies—ones that prioritise resilience, interdependence, and relationship over scale and control. But for that transformation to be complete, the structures surrounding the market—regulation, recognition, support—must evolve too. The story of the market is not just about who sells—it’s about who is allowed to shape the rules of trade, and whose work is seen as valuable.

And that, as it was in 1425, is still a question worth asking in 2025.

Eternal al Fresco

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 09:15:20 GMT

Why We Love to Eat and Drink Outside | the Timeless Pleasure of Al Fresco Dining

There’s something magical about eating and drinking outdoors. The simple joy of a summer BBQ, the romance of a French Impressionist picnic, or the refined experience of a cocktail on a dusky garden terrace, dining outside stirs something deep within us.

At Southernhay House, our garden and terrace invite guests to embrace this pleasure—whether it’s sipping a crisp gin and tonic as twilight fades or indulging in a leisurely lunch under warm dappled sunshine. Our garden is ‘hugged’ by the house, and so provides an oasis in the city centre: no traffic, no nosey passers-by, just green grass and white flagstones as your backdrop to civilisation.

Why is the prospect so alluring?

Is it that old chestnut, Nature?

From our ancestors gathering around a fire to cook, to the grand picnic traditions of 19th-century society, eating outdoors has always been tied to a sense of freedom: anywhere, any place, anytime you can make a meal together. Fresh air, the warmth of the sun, the rustling of leaves—does this make us feel in some way as though we’re in own little gardens of Eden?

Is al fresco eating an Art apart?

The French invented the word pique-nique (it’s a fun word; piquer meanings as you would expect, to nibble, to pick at and nique….well, just a cute rhyme which I translate as something small, casual, not too serious). I think a lot of the art of al fresco can be found in the French romantic tradition. Look at “Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe” and, getting past its provocative voyeurism, simply take it as a reflection on the art of eating outside. Impressionist artists like Monet and Renoir further romanticised outdoor dining, portraying scenes of long, lazy lunches and convivial gatherings in the countryside.

Today, we recreate these moments in our own way. A crisp glass of wine, condensation frosting the bowl, a simple but beautifully plated dish, and gentle conversation on a sunlit terrace—it’s the same spirit of indulgence and relaxation that those 19th-century artists adored.

Do people really let their hair down when eating al fresco?

Every meal together is about more than just food and no one knows this better than hospitality professionals. Taken at its most ‘outdoors-y’, a BBQ brings people together in a primal, communal way, while outdoor dining in a more refined setting fosters connection in a relaxed atmosphere. Conversations, relationships, just basic pleasure seems enhanced when a meal is taken outside - I think especially in this country, where the alchemy of weather and location doesn’t reliably come together and the pleasure seems all the more precious for that. An ordinary meal becomes an event.

Does food actually taste different when eaten outside?

“Well”, you might say, “that depends who’s cooking the sausages”. The fun of a BBQ very much does not depend on the taste of the food, in my opinion. But, in general, I would say yes - food really does taste more intense outside: it’s a combination of the rarity of the occasion, the fresh air, natural light, different sensory stimuli. And the more laid-back approach of the diners. A chilled glass of rosé on a summer afternoon, a freshly grilled dish with a hint of smoke—these experiences are genuinely heightened when enjoyed outside.

So, check your weather Apps, put your companions on alert: whether you’re in the mood for a leisurely brunch, a pre-dinner cocktail, or a nightcap under the stars, the al fresco spaces at Southernhay House offer a refined yet relaxed escape in the heart of the city. Step outside, take a deep breath, and indulge in the age-old pleasure of eating and drinking outdoors. After all, some things never go out of style.

Footnote | The Curious Case of Men and BBQs

It’s a well-documented phenomenon: put a man in a kitchen, and he might wander off in search of a takeaway menu. Put him in charge of a BBQ, and suddenly, he’s a Michelin-starred chef, a fire management expert, and a self-proclaimed meat sommelier.

Something primal seems to awaken when men are handed a pair of tongs and placed in front of an open flame. Perhaps it’s the distant echo of our prehistoric ancestors, triumphantly roasting a reindeer over an open fire?

The BBQ dynamic is also a spectacle to behold. There’s always:

• The Grill Master General – takes his role very seriously, prodding steaks and sausages with military precision and offering unsolicited advice to everyone within a five-mile radius.

• The Beer-Drinking Supervisor – firmly believes his moral support is crucial, despite never actually cooking anything.

• The “Let’s Just Wing It” Guy – insists that temperature control is for the weak and that raw chicken “will probably be fine.”

• The Flare-Up Firefighter – spends more time wrestling with flames than actually cooking food.

At Southernhay House Hotel, you can swerve all of that - we’re all for celebrating the theatrical joy of dining, but here you don’t have to worry about anyone setting their eyebrows on fire, or the chef wearing shorts.

Dressing to Express

Wed, 26 Feb 2025 12:35:01 GMT

You don't have to go quite as far as a dj to add a something extra to your evening....but dressing for the occasion has never been more relevant, or more fun!

Our social lives, it seems, can now be divided into those occasions that require a ‘dress code’ - predictably, weddings, funerals (although even then…), rugby dinners, office Christmas parties….and those that don’t. Casual dressing dominates and luxury has been redefined by cashmere tracksuits and premium trainers: the act of dressing up to go out can seem old school, or at least your efforts should be discretely hidden behind nonchalent athleisure-wear.

But how you think about, and present yourself for all special occasions has profound psychological benefits and can contribute to self-esteem, confidence, and overall mental well-being. Clothing can influence mood, behaviour, and self-perception - technically known as enclothed cognition . When we put effort into dressing for a social occasion, we are not just changing our outward appearance; we are signalling to ourselves that the moment matters. It also offers your companions a sense that the event - however ‘casual’ - is an occasion, and their company is important to you.

Not only your companions, actually. Historically, dressing up for going out was about more than just personal presentation - it was a way of showing reverence for the experience. Restaurants and cultural institutions are spaces worthy of effort and attention, and historically formality of dress reflected an appreciation for the craft of the chef, the harmony of the decor, the collective effort front of house. What the customer actually wears - signifying how they view the occasion - is very much part of our story and can affect everyone in the moment. No one is suggesting black tie is mandatory any more, although it’s damn fun if you want to project complete confidence and also delightfully naughty if unexpected. Since more casual clothing comes with a range of social baggage: each choice is a a marker of how hip, flush, energetic, rural or experimental you are, it can be easier to swerve anything that indicates actual……consideration: “Oh this? I’ve had it for ages”.

While we’re all about democratisation, and shudder at the thought of a strict dress code - there is always something special about an admiring glance at a guest’s outfit, a sense that they have chosen to dress in just that way to honour the evening. After all, the staff are wearing their own dress code, the flowers are fresh, the tables are clean, napkins folded and the glasses polished: self-care of our surroundings also extends to ourselves. Choosing an outfit that makes you feel confident and polished can serve as a form of respect; it sends a message to yourself that you are worthy of care and attention. And not just to yourself - trust us on this - it sends a message to those welcoming you, serving you, cooking for you, that you are taking pride in the occasion. If everyone in your party has made that conscious choice, it’s going to bring a sense of shared enthusiasm and collective appreciation for the occasion. When everyone makes an effort, the atmosphere feels more festive and special, reinforcing a sense of belonging and shared joy. There is a simple pleasure in celebrating the smaller moments in life by bringing a touch of elegance and intentionality to them.

It doesn’t have to be a milestone event; the act of dressing up is less about impressing others and more about elevating our own experiences. So next time you’re heading out for dinner, look in the mirror and (sorry, CoCo Chanel!) add one thing to your outfit that makes you feel elegant and that you don’t usually wear. Not for anyone else, but for you.

Ding, Dong, Merrily

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 16:20:06 GMT

Thoughts about hospitality on Christmas day (the 'most special' day of the year)....

To you, this may mean *just* inviting the neighbours round for a competitive posh mince pie and smoked salmon blini gesture. No harm in making sure they know who’s top dog on the street: but hang on; didn’t they produce some wagu-filled Yorkshire puds from the local market last year when you went round? Yikes; back to Waitrose it is.

To us, people in hotels, restaurants and bars who work for you all year round, it means a different bunch of things. First: who’s on the roster? Do we exempt anyone who has family? Impossible. Do we give priority to those who want to go to church? Well, that’s legally non-neg, but unless you have shown some signs of devotion year-round, prepare for a raised eyebrow. Do we sigh and suck up the - extensive, I could bore on but won’t - negative side of hourly contracts and waive the ‘I have commitments’ tribe goodbye, mentally making a note that come the depths of January they might not get all the shifts they would like? You bet. So, fundamentally, our Christmas Day staff will be the full-on, committed professionals who have been here for long enough to know what comes around goes around and the fairest way of apportioning shifts is on the basis of your regular days off. Yep: the great ‘whoo hoo, it’s holibobs time’ just doesn’t exist for us in full-time hospitality, any more than that weird word: ‘weekend’.

But none of us would be doing this unless we loved it: and there is something magic about being one of a resolute, elite and thus powerful group of workers who stride into Christmas morning with the intention of making sure that our guests enjoy every second of their day, choreographed with balletic precision. Yes: come Christmas, you are getting la crème de la crème at your table, and in the kitchen.

From menus without prices, to crackers with proper gifts inside (something for the table to play with, talk about - no worthy recycled origami please), music-hall masks and tiny tablescapes with colourful flowers….this was always going to be well planned. What we can’t plan for are the guests. You’re going to be the yeast in our bread: I’m not going to stretch that metaphor to its kneaded conclusion, but you see what I mean. You are the magic ingredient in our recipe. We’ve got our own alert system for each table: we know that if there are three of you, you might be taking out a parent who you don’t see often, because you or they probably don’t live locally, and so things might need low-key attention from the start; we know that if there are 5 or 6 of you, you probably know what you’re doing - we can spot the alpha-host a mile off and make sure the rest of you get a word in. We know that if you have a child in the mix (we have no children’s menus, pricing or facilities, so it would be a bit of a statement child here) that the kid will look at the menu and, when we suggest chips instead of gratin, smile. And we know that when it’s a two or a four, you just want to kick back and let us run the show….

All is calm, all is good, until the pud. This is our long-established code orange moment: the time when alcohol kicks in, tension (if it came to the table in the first place) starts to bubble up and staff are getting tired, counting down to the reinforcements coming on. Sure: there will have been bits and bobs along the way that needed adjusting, extra portions or dishes explaining. Maybe one of you will have thrown us an unanticipated dietary ball that needed sorting with the kitchen. But the proof of the pudding….is in not only the eating but the two-way relationship between the person making your day special and the guest making that person feel it is all worth while.

Yep: Christmas Day is magic for all the obvious reasons, but a peek backstage shows just how magic happens. Have a wonderful Christmas with all of your family, friends and familiar faces at SH or where ever you are.

Roman Civilisation?

deborah@southernhayhouse.com — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 08:12:45 GMT

For many Romans, the first time they heard of Vespasian was when he took a little Roman Legion over to the furthest flung outpost in the furthest flung colony in the growing Empire, under the Emperor Claudius...

Buried under the innocuous grass of Cathedral Green lies the largest Roman Military Bath House in the UK. It has long been a mission of #SoHoEx to unbury at least some of the site and create an interpretation centre for generations of curious children and adults; a focal point for the abundant history that pops around every street and corner in the city. Meanwhile....we will have to imagine how that looked in 49AD.

Titus Flavius Vespasianus wrapped a hot towel around himself and stepped out of the bath house to check what the incoming tide would bring. Thank Jupiter, the time for conflict was over - even if temporarily - and it was time for trade. The Commander of the Second Legion was expecting valuable cargo from the Roman colonies: spices, valuable metals and maybe even some fine Roman wines. Titus, who most called Vespasian because he was their boss - had been forced to drink the local ale; a disgusting sour tasting concoction that started with fermenting spelt, he had been told. Worse still was the fizzing apple juice the local Dumnonii tribe proudly and loudly waved around at the end of every summer: that had bowel-moving properties and was not what his troops needed at all. Far better stick with their regular posca mix of wine and vinegar, although you would have to promise him the Senate before he would touch it himself.

Really, Vespasian reflected, the people of Isca had been no trouble at all; some were almost civilised. Some had welcomed him under their roofs with proper Roman (and even better, Greek) wine, which they had traded further south on the coast in exchange for their very nice supple leather and even finer beasts. Vespasian was pleased that his Legion had managed to establish a nice little trading port just a stade or so away from the main barracks, on that hard bit of ground by the estuary, just before it narrowed and shallowed.

That would be a good legacy, a mark of respect to the local tribe for the ease with which they had let his Legion ‘conquer’ their territory. Isca was a good place to stop - before losing sleep, men and reputation in trying to push further into the wild and unruly land that lay to the West. Leave them to it, he thought: I have a good, solid base and some friends here, yes: friends, who will carry on with the process of Roman civilisation long after we’ve withdrawn. Vespasian was already contemplating his triumphant return to Rome, and calculating how many of the provinces he had occupied would swing his way, were he needing to show his muscle with the Senate.

Meanwhile, he pondered: what is it with that ale? Might his legacy be even better assured if he were able to leave something less tangible than roads, bath houses, temples behind? What lasts longer than bricks and mortar? Vespasian remembered the vows he had taken with his First Cohort, over wine that was less watered than it probably should have been. Those vows would stay with him and (he hoped) with them, forever. Now, obviously this wind-swept and not very agreeable part of the world would never bear vines and thus wine. But could Vespasian bend something more common to his - let’s face it - pretty admirable will, and create something magical from produce found in every marketplace. Surely, with a little Roman ingenuity and liberal use of the spices, dried herbs and sugar that were shortly coming on the tide, the fermenting spelt could be, well, maybe after passing through some kind of purification like a filter or heat of some kind, made into something eternal?

Isca spiritus est nunc et in perpetuum decoctus

“The Spirit of Exeter distilled, now and forever”

Hospitality Tightrope

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 09:37:19 GMT

“An employer”, said a bonkers but wise barrister to me, once, “has the most dangerous job in Britain”. I laughed it off at the time, but have found myself checking in with this on a regular basis in the last 4 years. I would certainly say that, in 2024, an employer in hospitality has one of the most perilous jobs in Britain.

We’ve been through a lot, collectively. And, to offer another perennially wise quote, this time from Mr Buffett: “when the tide goes out…..”*. Covid and lockdown was one such tidal wash; 2024 another. This year has, without doubt, been the most challenging in my sector within the 24 years of my experience. That’s not to decry 2008, 2016 (Brexit), and of course 2020-2022. Yet each of those pinch points seemed finite: 2024 seems to me to be the start of a new pattern in hospitality in this country - you are going to see changes in product from the survivors and you are going to make changes in your behaviour as customers.

The recent budget can be viewed as a correction and a reset. I get the need for a dramatic recalibration of resources, and it’s not as though the pain isn’t spread around. The pain, in my own business, is something in the region of £15,000 p.a net off the bottom line, before accounting for the min wage increase and its knock on consequences. That’s as a small business with no more than 20 employees at any time. It’s major, but if I can take it for a couple of years I may be rewarded. Those two years are, however, going to be rough all round (and not just for hospitality).

Ah! Employees. You, the consumer, will have noticed something in your diminishing use of bars, restaurants, hotels and cafes: the staff. Hospitality is performed in the round; everyone from kitchen to cleaner, greeter to eater is part of the picture and that picture needs to be right in every detail. At our best, we give you the illusion that it’s second nature; easy, spontaneous and joyful. The clue is in the actual name: ‘hospitality’. When a business can’t deliver those factors, it’s not hospitable at all. If you come away from an experience feeling cheated, as though you didn’t count, a little blue - you may not even be able to put your finger on it - that’s when the veil has slipped. Everything in this sector comes back to people: and that is why I think the future of hospitality in this country is fragile but not broken.

One: some employers are lucky enough to have long-term and professional staff. People that buy into the individual culture of our business and have independent roles and relationships within the business and with guests. I’m lucky enough for this to account for most of our team, but I know this is rare. Two: since 2016, there has been a desperate lack of incoming enthusiasm into this sector. It is a fact, generally acknowledged, that few if any English teens think hospitality is even a ‘proper’ job. Come on Gen Alpha: I know 2020-22 was rough for you and us together, but when are you going to come out of your bedrooms? How many of you pull the duvet over your head on a Saturday morning and call in sick? Do I risk another one of you on payroll? Prove me wrong, please.

Three: you. You are critical to the survival of hospitality, and to what it looks like. On you, the whole landscape depends. What do you want when you go out? Think about it carefully, and use your power wisely. Again, I think we (on the other side of the menus) have about two years juice to see if the new economic regime bears fruit. Will anyone ever go out for more than a pizza and burger again? Will anyone ever stay for the night, well….just because! Or walk into a bar on their own for a Martini made ‘their way’ because the bar staff know exactly what that is? I know that all of this depends on you feeling secure; thus the tightrope is stretched across the unknown. All I can personally do to get us across the ravine is what I do now: mix an obsession for detail with a determined optimism that the human spirit both young and (a little) older will seek out company and good service as the tide rises again.

Fast forward a couple of years and I think we will see fewer but more distinct independent restaurants, bars, hotels. They will be confident in what they’re about and why you should be there. They will have distilled their essence into something clear and you should know before you enter what you’re getting. Menus will be shorter, prices will be marginally higher but not off-putting or disproportionate. Most importantly, and this is non negotiable, the staff will be professional, invested and in it for the long term. Hey: you might even choose us over one of the chains, which will - I am sure - still be exactly the same.

”when the tide goes out you find out who has been swimming naked”* Warren Buffett

SH: People Power

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 09:54:13 GMT

who's been living in our house? taking our building in central exeter and viewing its social evolution

A Reflection of Exeter’s Changing Demographics

In the heart of Exeter’s historic Southernhay district, Southernhay House stands as a testament to the city’s evolving social and cultural landscape. Built in the early 19th century, this Grade II* listed Georgian townhouse has not only served as a residence for prominent figures but has also adapted to changing times, reflecting the shifting demographics and priorities of Exeter’s community.

A Georgian Jewel: Early Occupants

We begin with Major General William Kirkpatrick, who took up residence of Southernhay House shortly after the house’s construction. Kirkpatrick, an officer of the East India Company and a noted diplomat and orientalist, retired to Exeter after a distinguished career. His presence highlights Exeter’s appeal as a prestigious locale for ‘influencers’ of the British Empire. You can find out much more about the colourful Kirkpatrick within the hotel and here .

The early 19th century saw Southernhay emerge as a residential enclave for the city’s growing middle classes. The Georgian terraces, developed by William Hooper and Matthew Nosworthy, became home to professionals such as doctors, lawyers, and retired military personnel. Southernhay House - although not a Nosworthy-Hooper build and distinguished by its comparative grandeur - epitomised this trend, offering elegance and exclusivity to its occupants.

Medical Prestige: The Mid-19th to Early 20th Century

By the mid-19th century, Southernhay House’s proximity to the Devon and Exeter Hospital made it a favoured residence for medical professionals. A succession of affluent doctors, including Arthur Kempe, Dr. Drake, and Dr. Henry Davy, called the house home. Their presence underscored the growth of Exeter as a centre of medical excellence and reflected a broader shift in the city’s demographics, with the rise of skilled professionals in the urban landscape.

The Roper family, spanning three generations of physicians, occupied Southernhay House until 1947. Their tenure marks the peak of the property’s association with the medical elite, reinforcing its role as a hub for Exeter’s professional class.

Post-War Transition: From Residence to Commerce

After World War II, Exeter underwent significant social and economic changes, and Southernhay House’s role evolved accordingly. In 1948, the house became the home of the Exeter and County Club, transforming into a social venue for the city’s business and professional community. This shift from private residence to communal space mirrored broader trends in post-war Britain, where properties were increasingly repurposed to serve collective (albeit masculine) needs.

Later, the building was used as office space by firms of chartered accountants. This commercial adaptation reflected Exeter’s growing importance as a regional economic centre and the declining practicality of large Georgian homes as private residences.

A Modern Revival: Boutique Hospitality

In 2011, Southernhay House began a new chapter as a boutique hotel. Under the ownership of Tony Orchard and Deborah Clark, the property was lovingly restored, blending its historic charm with modern luxury. The hotel’s rooms, named after exotic goods such as Silk, Cotton, and Spice, pay homage to Exeter’s mercantile heritage, a nod to the city’s prominence as a trading hub during the Georgian era.

Today, Southernhay House and its decor serves as a vibrant reminder of Exeter’s rich history while catering to contemporary tastes. Its transformation from a military officer’s retreat to a professional’s residence, then to a commercial venue, and finally to a boutique hotel mirrors the city’s journey through industrialisation, professionalisation, and modern economic diversification.

Past Imperfect

deborah@southernhayhouse.com — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 09:58:50 GMT

A bite-sized canter through the centuries of trade and colonialism that informed much of the design and personality of Southernhay House. Hang on for the ride:

I feel quite protective of my favourite greedy, mercantile, fleshy and feisty Georgians, but it’s fair to say they had few scruples about how cotton, silk, coffee, sugar and tea got into their homes. Worse; if they could make a nice retirement income on a generic trading bond, they would. It built them comfortable country estates and flashy seaside confections all along the south coast.

Southernhay House is the genuine Georgian deal and a central character in Exeter’s history; it’s past and the life of its inhabitants informs everything. The end of the 18th century was a boom time for Exeter. I’m fascinated by this era of new-ness, opportunity, radical thinking , cultural appropriation and worse.

It’s frustratingly hard to get a handle on the extent of the slave trade in Devon because it lies hidden beneath generic investments in “goods” and quiet gentility . But it wasn’t always so: piracy is a first cousin of slaving, and our local Elizabethans were enthusiastic adopters of both. Of course Plymouth and Falmouth, the farthest western ports in England, played a significant part in the transport of goods and people to and from the plantations of the Caribbean and the Americas. It started early, in 1527. William Hawkins, from Plymouth, made a journey to Guinea in a ship named after and funded by the most politically prominent family in Devon. He was after gold, looking for el dorado, but from the deck of the “Pole of Plymouth” William saw Africans loaded for Brazil. In 1562, his son, John, was back in Guinea with human cargo. This is the John Hawkins you will have heard of as being the founder of the “triangle trade”. Public debate about the re-naming of Sir John Hawkins Square in Plymouth is still on-going.

So, to trade. In conceptualising Southernhay House, my goal was to explore, explain and inform you about our Georgian past. The first owner, Captain William Kirkpatrick , was a key player in the East India Company at - if I can use this expression neutrally - it’s inquisitive peak. There was blood, violence and terrible exploitation but there was also an open sense of new horizons, new cultures and discovery.

Naming the rooms became a path to understanding the pathways of European trade, and a way to connect to the modern world. It’s a story that builds, of course, to the worst excesses of Empire. But there is romance and adventure along the way. For those who don’t know your Ambergris from your Opium, here is a bite-sized explanation:

Sericulture is the farming method by which Silk is still produced today - by growing, harvesting and boiling the cocoons of the mulberry silkworm larvae. There’s a word I first learned in 1978, when I heard “Being Boiled” by The Human League - well worth a listen . Silk has been traded since the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD) and is the most ancient of the trade routes, carrying goods between the two then giants, Rome and China. The trade was reciprocal; Silk went west to Rome and wools, gold and silver (from the Roman Empire) went east along a staggered caravan route of over 4,000 miles. You’ll have heard of Marco Polo, who used the route to travel to China (Cathy) in the 13th century to the court of Kublai Khan. It’s quite probable that the Black Death travelled back along the route at the same time.

Spice is a truly global commodity and traded world-wide. The demand grew in modern Europe after Vasco de Gama opened the first ocean route - via the Cape - from Europe to the Indian Ocean in 1489. It was the longest sea-voyage then recorded, taking in the coast of Africa right through to Asia avoided the fish-in-barrel piracy of the Mediterranean. De Gama’s three voyages were peppered with scurvy, ignorance of local faiths, customs and even weather patterns. Pepper and cinnamon were the first spices to hit Europe from Southeast Asia, but soon followed other indigenous products to rapturous demand. Portugal maintained a monopoly over this trade route for the next century. My sense is that, unlike the relative one to one reciprocity of the older Silk Route, this enterprise would have been bloody and crammed with miscomprehension and greed. It would set a precedent for the future empirical aspirations of Holland and England, later France and Denmark.

Tulip is a fun one. So identified now with Holland, tulips were newcomers in mid 16th century Europe when they were introduced from the Ottoman Empire. Who doesn’t love an overblown parrot Tulip ? As these flowers became more popular, and demand spread to France, speculators entered the market. Through 1636 the contract price of rare bulbs rose dramatically and suddenly; at its peak a Tulip bulb sold for 10 times the annual income of a skilled craftsman. Forget about the actual flowers; this was the first futures market and the first bubble in one. Contracts to buy bulbs at the end of the 1636 season were bought and sold in taverns at hugely inflated paper prices, buyers paying a 2.5% “wine money” fee per trade but no up-front margin or mark-to-market margin. This was described by many observers as windhandel (“wind trade”). Too right, because, in the expectation of making more and more profit on the trades, the contracts were sold on and on, with some saps hoping to make 10 times or more profit from their “future” Tulip purchases. No surprise, when the enthusiastic wind dropped, the market fell, speculators went bust and sellers were left reaping what they could.

The craze for drinking Chai swept Europe with the English ironically being the last to catch on. When Charles II married Catherine of Braganza, daughter of the King of Portugal, in 1662, she brought with her not only her fashionable tea-drinking habit but also Mumbai and Tangier in her dowry. This gave the British East India Company a permanent base in India, whence they supplied the domestic markets. Chai was initially an exclusive and luxury product. Twinings opened in The Strand in 1706: the cache of tea was strong with Tom Twining. It sold at between 14 and 36 shillings per pound, while coffee went for four shillings. Thomas was also ahead of the curve, and very astute, in opening his doors to women. A Twining actually supplied tea to the Governor of Boston (unknowingly) for his “tea party”. But Chai did not become the universal beverage of England until the end of the 18th century, when duties were slashed (again, a Twining was involved) from 119% to 12.5%.

From the mid 17th century, coffee houses were natural business networks and, taking the lead from Queen Catherine, aspiring aristocratic ladies took to tea. Sugar was their natural bedfellow. The period saw the first planting of cash crops in the new Caribbean “colonies” and the British relationship with sweetness really took off. In an inversion of everything you know, triple-refined white Sugar was the most expensive product, but you could get ordinary brown Sugar at a reasonable price, failing which dark, spoon-standing treacle was the cheapest option. 17th and 18th century recipe books are filled with ideas on how to show off your new habit, from sprinkling Sugar on vegetables to a trifle that’s true to its name . Preserves and jams came into their own. Protectionist policies held import duties low as demand surged, and by 1801 it’s estimated that the English consumed 13.87kg Sugar per person per annum. As of now, it's around 35kg.

Thousands of years of production in India did not mean the Medieval European world was ready for Cotton when first introduced to the fabric. Noting that Cotton is a plant but similar to wool, one author in 1350 sweetly wrote that “there grew in India a wonderful tree which bore tiny lambs on the end of its branches [which are] so pliable that they bend down to allow the lambs to feed when they are hungrie.” Those days of innocent, small-scale trading were swept aside by the dominance of British-led industrialised manufacture during and after the Industrial Revolution (the first Cotton mill was built in 1733). Like Sugar, most of the Cotto n to feed the mills was grown and harvested by slave labour in the Caribbean and, until the end of the American Civil War in 1865, plantations in America. Between 1825 and 1870, Cotton was Britain’s largest import.

In the 2020 market, Ambergris is half as valuable as gold. It’s been higher. But it’s a good bet that you might not even know what it is, or how to pronounce it. Ambergris (personally, I keep the “s” silent) is an ashy-coloured, rock-like, waxy substance excreted by the sperm whale. It is built up of secretions which the whale uses to avoid lacerations by the small bones and beaks of squid and cuttlefish in its feed. Ambergris has been found for millennia, floating on the sea - and the longer it stays there the better it is cured. Once cured, it smells weirdly divine: in Moby Dick, Herman Melville wrote of the terrible odour of a dead whale, from which "stole a faint stream of perfume". Whales do not have to die for Ambergris to be harvested, but the industrial scale of the whaling industry in the 19th century certainly fed the demand.

There’s one glaring trade that cannot be ignored. You’ve just read about the English beginnings of slaving, so read on for its end. William Wilberforce (1759-1833) is one of my favourite Georgians, albeit a bit of a prude. I admire him for his 18 years in Parliament, continuously lobbying and introducing motions for the abolition of slavery. In 1807, this finally happen to a standing ovation, but the Act did not free those who were already slaves (in fact, Haiti was the first country to abolish slavery in one blow; the European nations all took this two-tier approach). Wilberforce’s work was not, then, done. He continued to lobby until 1833, when an Act was passed to give freedom to all then counted as slaves in the British Empire. Wilberforce died one month later.

During the 18th and early 19th centuries, the British East India Company bought Opium from Indian producers to sell on the black market into China as a trade for luxury goods such as tea and silk. The British problem was that the Chinese would not buy British products in return for the valued Chinese imports. The Chinese (reasonably) would only sell against universal silver. To avoid depleting British silver stocks, the East India Company - and others - actually began to smuggle Opium from India into China and sell on the black market for silver. By 1839, illegal Opium sales into China paid for the entire tea trade back to Britain. It was a weirdly 21st century horror; although Opium was valued as a medication that could ease pain, assist sleep and reduce stress - by 1840 there were millions of addicts in China. By the time of the final Opium War, in 1860, there was no going back in Anglo-Sino relations: Hong Kong had been ceded to Britain (1842), the prestige of the Qing Dynasty bombed and millions of people had been killed or damaged by addiction in the pursuit of tea and silk.

I have no idea why anyone would buy Ivory , but they have and do. It’s such a pretty word, but I can’t believe there weren’t alternative materials for the fans, hairpins, and snuff boxes of Georgian England. The only time Ivory is useful is veneer for piano keys, since it is durable and apparently sweat-wicking: but I would readily take this loss in exchange for an elephant. Yet, despite trading in Ivory being illegal in most countries worldwide, it persists. Piano keys are no longer an excuse, so I asked Google why anyone still buys Ivory . In 2016, WWF partnered with a phychosocial researcher to get to the cultural roots of the desire that still drives this trade. Studies focused on China, the biggest market for elephant (and other) Ivory . It appears that diehard Ivory buyers today are women with higher than average incomes, living in smaller cities. They buy Ivory because it is rare, beautiful, and it’s still a status symbol for them. No big surprises there, then, although there's a grain of hope in that presumably younger, metropolitan Chinese are rejecting Ivory . Meanwhile, around 47 elephants per day are killed for their tusks. Find out more here .

Saffron . At last, a trade in which no one dies. Maybe related to that is the fact that Saffron is a slow-burner of a trade; it didn’t explode into the western world full of new-ness so demand has built gradually. Although now one of the most expensive spices by weight, the Saffron crocus was quite common throughout Europe, including Saffron Walden, where it was naturalised in the fourteenth century and the stamens used extensively as a dye for the burgeoning English wool trade. The crocus is unknown in the wild and is believed to have originated in Iran, then cultivated in the familiar trading arc of Turkey, Greece, Kashmir. The English word comes from the Arabic word Za’faran and Iran is still the world’s largest producer, which means current sanctions are now impacting on its price. Of course, my fashionable and ubiquitous passion for Middle Eastern cookery also has an effect on this market; all trades rely on a buyer.

Vison, On

Mon, 14 Jun 2021 09:37:19 GMT

What do you see in this picture? Me first: at a simple level I see three beautiful women dancing together in a stylised idyllic setting. The flowers underfoot, the position of the women, their hands clasped and caressing make me think along classical lines - maybe three graces?

I know that this is an engraving by William Blake. And I know enough about Blake, his politics (borderline anarchy, actually) and his out-there transgressive mysticism to know that this is meant to be a positive, inclusive message, an allegory saying we are all of us nothing without everything working in harmony. That sounds like paradise, and this image was no doubt nodding in that direction. It was commissioned by a friend of his, John Stedman, for his book exploring colour, oppression and freedom. It’s thought that the slave bracelets worn by Africa and America represent literal hard fact, while handclasps and mutual support symbolise Stedman’s principle that “we only differ in colour but are certainly all created by the same Hand.” Blake's idea of paradise wasn’t patriarchal, other-worldly; it was here and now and his visual art, and writings, try to draw that divine mysticism down to earth.

Yes, Blake was the definition of an idealist. He was angry, rebellious and voracious, cherry-picking the ideals of the French Revolution and kicking against the conventional pricks of the time. Huffing about the conservatism of the Royal Academy, of which he was still happy to be a member, and specifically taking a swipe at Sir Joshua Reynolds, he denounced the whole thing as a fraud and set out his stall with a news thump: "to generalise is to be an idiot".

I’ve been looking at this engraving, a copy of which hangs in Southernhay House, a lot recently. This picture has provoked some interesting comments and I realise it is not possible to read it fully without a background knowledge of Blake. I don’t think that makes it different from any other creative work. While you may not connect Blake the artist with the many images that you are familiar with - his visual work is so distinctive, so trippy - you know at least one of his poems, Jerusalem, written in 1804 and now co-opted into a quasi national anthem. I love anything that crosses borders and Blake ticks all my boxes.

As another of my fave poets, T S Eliot, wrote, “[Blake’s poetry has] a peculiar honesty, which, in a world too frightened to be honest, is peculiarly terrifying. It is an honesty against which the whole world conspires, because it is unpleasant.” In Jerusalem, the world has conspired to misinterpret Blake's critique of our "Dark Satanic Mills" into a celebration of sovereignty.

Blake’s lifetime (1757-1827) was prime time for global exploitation. It was also the time of revolutions political and industrial, research, beauty and the democratisation of intellectual curiosity through printed pamphlets and coffee houses. There were conversations about slaving and oppression happening, then as now. There were radical non-conformists like Blake, probably more than now. The Georgians were, then, just like us.

Blake’s visual work was important to these discussions; his engravings connected with a mass audience. Printed pictures, given that a lot of poorer people would still have questionable literacy, were huge at the end of the 18th century.

In Blake's world, even working-class women got a look in. Blake’s wife, Catherine, was illiterate when they married in 1782 (she signed her name with an “X”) Blake taught her to write, sharing his engraving skills with her. Principles of equality run strongly through his work. I assume Catherine put her foot down when Blake notoriously tried on a threesome in the interest of revolutionary free-love, maybe not; they were happily married to his dying day.

There’s a further twist to Blake, which explains why I know a little about him. It’s my age, you see: Blake goes in and out of fashion like a pair of flares. After his death, the early Victorians were suspicious of the whole free-love, mystic thing (at least in public) and it took the high romanticism of the Pre-Raphaelites to give him a rehab. Then everything Blake went quiet - until my generation. Yes, in the ‘60s and ‘70s Blake was a rock and roll god. He was quoted as an influence by some of my favourites: Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Patti Smith, Kris Kristofferson, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, and Bono. The recent BBC poll of 100 Greatest Britons ranked Blake 38th, higher than any other visual artist and second in poetry only to Shakespeare.

But I want to let Catherine have the last word: “ I have so very little of Mr Blake’s company; he is always in Paradise.”

The Booking Truth

Sat, 08 May 2021 15:21:31 GMT

If you never use booking.com or any other Online Travel Agent (OTA) I give you a virtual high five.

You can stop reading now and bask in the silent applause of independent hoteliers everywhere. But if you use OTAs, I want you to know what you’re getting. You’ll tell me it makes life easy, in an Amazon kind of way and that you’re getting the cheapest deal. Easy, it is. Cheapest, it’s not.

In 2020, Which? Travel found that guests are paying 12% more than they need for hotel rooms because of commissions to OTAs. These commissions can be up to 25% and the entry level is 15%. There is no way a sensible business does not factor for this by gently adding a margin to the headline tariff.

Of course, the OTA model says they use the commission for the benefit of the hotels by paying huge sums to Google etc to gain headline visibility on search engines. It works. But who wins? Not you, paying over the odds for your room because the hotel pays commission. If you’re happy with that, in exchange for a faceless, fast transaction, fine. But at a time when we are re-evaluating our connections with everyone and everything, let’s re-evaluate booking a room for a night. After all, this is one of few transactions that involves trusting someone you don’t know to look after you when you are at your most vulnerable - sleeping.

We’re all becoming more sophisticated on-line so why do booking.com and expedia still dramatically dominate? Adam Raphael, editor of The Good Hotel Guide, has delved into the family trees of these two giants in a recent blog. As he notes, according to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) two thirds of you consult an OTA before deciding where to stay. That’s understandable, given the quantities they pour into search engines to capture your instant gratification. My tiny violin is working overtime at the news that Google stock is likely to drop 17% or more since Feb 2020 as (amongst others things) booking.com’s spending on ad words drops from $4b to around $1.5b.

Then, how many of you realise that you are paying for a virtual agent? According to a US survey, almost a quarter of visitors think that in booking through an OTA portal, you will pop out onto the hotel’s real-time booking system. Not so, my friends. And, as Adam again notes, 95% of the OTA business is controlled by just two mega-giants: Expedia and Priceline. Expedia affiliates include Trivago, Tripadvisor (remember those days?), Travelocity, Hotwire, hotels.com. Priceline, basically, is booking.com.

To be fair, the CMA is keeping a close eye on the ways in which you are persuaded to part with payment for your overnight break via a third party. Did you know: if we pay more commission, we get bumped up the search results. You think this is logical, right? But the flip side is that the hotel is going to increase its price to you to compensate because that makes business sense too.

Then there’s my favourite, because you won’t know this unless I tell you: the OTAs have long tried to impose contractual restrictions on hotels from offering cheaper tariffs elsewhere (what is called “most favoured nation” or rate parity clauses). This practice has taken a hammering from European courts. In 2015, French, Italian and Swedish competition authorities got binding commitments from several OTAs to avoid these clauses. Here in the UK, booking.com and expedia pledged a voluntary undertaking in August 2020 but how this plays out post lockdown only the hotels on the receiving end of the practice will know.

Returning to my Amazon analogy: it’s got its uses, and so have the OTAs. As Keith Makepeace, the force behind the chic, family-run, way-of-life Soar Mill Cove in the South Hams says: “OTA’s can work if you base your income module around this and if your product is letting identical boxes which can be compared to other boxes based on distance, dimension and price.” Sounds fun. Keith took his hotel off the OTAs last year. It was a bold move but valid for a hotel which is a destination in itself. And as for the best price, Keith offers “a John Lewis style price guarantee [because] reassurance is probably key to keep loyalty for us.”

Yes: most hotels will continue to use OTAs because in a noisy world we need a loud voice to get your attention. But, once grabbed, be savvy and look a little beyond the headline; you will always get the best deal - in personal service as well as price - if you contact us direct.

A Tale of Two Cities

Tue, 06 Apr 2021 16:20:09 GMT

"There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." Which Baring brother are you?

Let me take you from the world of international finance down an historical rabbit hole back to the heart of pre-industrial Devon. Scene 1: it’s 26 ^th February 1995 and trader Nick Leeson, based out of Singapore, has just toppled the oldest merchant bank in the UK. We gasped at the lack of scrutiny by the bank, the chutzpah without charm of the rogue trader. Leeson was trading in futures with no grasp on tomorrow.

Flashback: it’s 1717 and 20 year-old Johann Baring arrives in Exeter from his hometown of Bremen. George I is on the throne and you know the gregarious, social climbing, grasping Georgians are some of my favourite people. Johann is taking an apprenticeship in wool trading and this was big in Devon at the beginning of the 18 ^th century. I could go on about the loveliness of wool and its importance in the economy of Devon: production involved the whole family – from farming, shearing, carding to spinning and weaving, everyone had a role. And each family’s small-scale production fed into the markets of the county and from there to Exeter, for export around the country and the world.

Step into the story 25 year-old Elizabeth Vowler, only child and heiress of John Vowler, a rich “grocer”, importing tea and sugar. Elizabeth had a dowry of £20,000, or over £4m today. But don’t dismiss John as a gold digger – by now he’s a British citizen with a British name – he bided his time and he didn’t marry Elizabeth just for her money. Doubtless there was mutual attraction, and all the more strongly because she had been a silent partner in her father’s business. It was a match of equals and Elizabeth was an important commercial player both before and after her husband’s early death, in 1748.

The couple had five children, two of whom, I think, symbolize a turning point in Devon’s history. The oldest, John junior, was 18 when his father died, Francis just 8. Elizabeth continued running the family business, now worth £40,000.

Now it gets interesting, since the Industrial Revolution was just around the corner and very few people in Devon sensed it yet. Young Francis was sent away to London, first at school and then apprenticed to a leading cloth merchant with direct experience of the new mechanical cloth spinning trade. John, just 10 years’ older, missed that opportunity boat. On Christmas Day 1762, Elizabeth lent her sons the seed capital to found a bank. Well, two banks; Francis Baring of London and John Baring of Exeter. The idea was that London would find a market to sell the wool produced in Devon, via the Exeter bank. This was the first merchant bank in the UK and just the second in Europe.

Grasping the opportunities available in London, Francis expanded into financial services and, yes, slaving. In 1774, Barings was doing business in the US, positioning itself before Independence. Think of the turmoil of those times, recently matched by our own. Revolutions, the Napoleonic Wars: a fertile breeding ground for innovation. In 1802 Barings facilitated the purchase by the USA of Louisiana from the French, “one of the most historically significant trades of all time”, for $15,000,000, most of it in US bonds technically sold by Napoleon to Barings and sold on with a profit of 12.5%. It almost doubled the size of the USA and financed Napoleon’s war effort against Britain. The pursuit of money rarely aligns with the national interest.

So what happened to John? This is a domestic story, as his wife of just 8 years died in 1765, leaving him with six children. All of John’s focus returned to Exeter, where he lived (and bought a lot of it) until his death at a good old age, in 1816.

This is what I mean by the brothers representing a turning point: Francis went to London, made a fortune, got a peerage and leapt feet-first into new trades and politics. John chose a quieter life based on what he already knew and what he had learned from his parents. By the end of their lives they were virtually living in different ages, as were their respective home cities.

The Industrial Revolution didn’t work for Devon; we’re founded on farming, fishing and food. More recently, people have flocked to Devon for pleasure not dark satanic mills. But, like the Baring brothers, we’re living through a combination of global turmoil and new technologies. Has the pull of London waned? Wil l the ebb draw ambition and talent back to Devon in future?

Lockdown Luck

Sat, 26 Dec 2020 16:25:41 GMT

This is what we did during lockdown. We didn’t plan it this way, of course.

The Green Room at Southernhay House was set up, in our heads, in the early days of 2011 while we were remodeling and designing the building as a boutique hotel. It was always going to be a light touch, a glass extension to the main action in the hotel bar. In 2018 we sat down with our long-term conspirator and conservation architect, Jo Hibbert, to have a little chat about the new structure. We had just sold Burgh Island and the time seemed right to move Southernhay House into the limelight, to grow the spaces on offer and to make something that would be a talking point for Exeter and its visitors.

Jo has touched base with us on various planning works at Burgh Island, and her firm, Levitate, were instrumental in getting the consents needed for the conversion of Southernhay House, in 2010. She’s advised, also, on our family home. Basically, if I give her the waffly brief of “an origami dojo-type structure with semi-colonial echos”, she understands. She’s also seriously in tune with what works, technically and aesthetically, next to a listed building.

The planners were sympathetic. We had already thrown the main structure out from the Georgian facade, linked with a glass “bridge”. I’m writing from there now; table 12 is my new favourite creative space. It’s like being in the control tower of an airport, with 360-degree views.

When this is all over, in the new world of 2023 or thereabouts, we’ll look back, nod wisely and say “of course, we couldn’t have planned it better. How could we think of keeping the hotel open while building works were going on? What a silver lining....” Because, dear reader, by then it was apparent that the delicate origami structure was going to sit on very solid foundations and 26 earth-driven piles covered with poured concrete. At the beginning of March 2020 we got into the ground; we thought we could get away with just an intense few weeks while the weather was still cold and our guests were snug inside.

My favourite thing about all build projects is the way the trades work together. There’s something fundamental, and timeless, about building. Everyone has been doing it for as long as we’ve had community. On this project, we were lucky to have found Steve - a master builder with a diverse skill set, including project co-ordination. We’d worked closely with Steve in 2019 on Number Nine Exe, our Southernhay office conversion. Steve, Jo, the Silver Fox and I spoke the same language and it was easy to trust him with our new baby.

Week beginning 16th March, it was clear something major was up. On the evening of 19th March, the Silver Fox and I took the decision to close the hotel. On Friday 20th March it was obvious we were heading into uncharted territory. Our SH cobra meeting took place and by noon, with the last guest eating breakfast and checking out, we were closed. Steve moved into the hotel, for security and to supervise the build, which was now the only constructive (literally) thing we could do with the business.

Meanwhile, I started to collect and collate the interior. I’m not going to come over all “whoohoo” and talk about mood and atmosphere. But it’s nice that I’m looking up right now and feeling exactly what I hoped to feel about the space earlier this year. I’ve used a combination of texture in terrazzo tiles, velvet seats, blonde wood, and shine in leather and glass. I’m a mid-century, Sandi-classic kind of woman and it shows. If you know the bar at Southernhay House, you’ll also know I love introducing “before they were famous” shots, as talking points. The Green Room has plenty of those. But design is nothing without purpose and authenticity. In that, the finished Green Room owes everything to the trades who worked to an organic brief. Things change during the course of a project and it’s a mistake to be too fixed in the process. Plus, lockdown allowed some intense periods of work; far more than we could have achieved with the more “flat pack” build process we’d originally envisaged. The terrace and garden are the best example; we extended them both so that the Green Room now hugs the outside spaces, holding an oasis between its arm and the back of the hotel. It’s far from an extension - it’s the main stage! Who knows what fabulous meet-ups, parties and celebrations it will see in future years?

Design on-line

Luckily, given the circumstances, one of my super powers is on-line shopping. Everything except the tiles (from local outlet Mandarin Stone) was bought sight unseen. I’m especially pleased with the original Blade Runner poster from 1982, and the statement sideboard, from @chirpykitsch and painted to order in Farrow and Ball “sap green” No W56. This new colour is part of their “Colour by Nature” collection, collaborating with the Natural History Museum, and I’ve used “orange coloured white” No W5 (my new favourite neutral) on the walls. The Art Deco wall-lights are genuine; they’re left over from the bar I designed at Burgh Island and have been looking for a home ever since. RHA Furniture (trade only) have always been my go-to for long-term investment pieces. Top favourite site Vinterior, have a great collection of up market, European designs and the coffee table is one of them - but I never pass on good value outlets like: Swoon, Made, Anthropologie and Furniture Village.

Pestilential Plague

Thu, 14 May 2020 08:14:01 GMT

The present pandemic is part of a deadly dance that has lasted for centuries. The first one to hit our shores has an eerie similarity to C-19. Can we learn from how that played out?

OK, so our one was probably brought here from the lurid nightclubs of Ischal, but this isn’t dissimilar to how Medieval England saw The Black Death in the fourteenth century. The church tried to blame it on our generally naughty off-duty behavior, until the high mortality rate amongst priests knocked that one into touch. It followed the same route of transmission, from China, via Italy, through France and Spain and thence to England. It was travel that spread it then and now. In 1347 Pestilence arrived in Lombardy. By March 1348 Venice closed its ports and told incoming ships to self-isolate for 40 days in the lagoon (this is the root of “quarantine”).

You learned at school about The Black Death: how fleas transmitted it carried on rats carried on cargo ships into our ports. That makes Devon and the southwest pretty clear targets, dependent as we were on sea-faring trade. Unsurprisingly, the first recorded case was brought into Weymouth, in June 1348. Cases spread rapidly outwards through the region. It took around 500 days to rip through the entire country.

But I’m interested in what happened next; how The Plague changed life in England. There are some weirdly familiar themes here, too. First, religion (the equivalent of today’s politics) got polarized. You either opted for it: you founded a college if you had enough cash to flash (my old college was founded directly as a consequence, in 1348) or you built a private chapel if you wanted to be more low-key about your wealth. If you were really angry with the way the church had handled the crisis, you opted out down the anti-clerical route of John Wycliffe (1328-1384) and, since the term protestant had yet to be coined, called yourself a Lollard.

In the background, the Hundred Years War against France was put on hold until 1355. Still sounding familiar?

In searching for answers and scapegoats, the spotlight fell on the clergy, all of whom were then appointed by the Vatican, which also extracted fees and taxes for the pleasure of, basically, running the church in Europe. In the hotpot of post-Plague England, this was a definite red line. Edward III passed the Statute of Preamunire in 1353 (bear with me; this is actually quite interesting). This law was aimed at blocking any payments out of the State to “the court of Rome”, or elsewhere. By those two words, Edward III was making a declaration of independence from all foreign powers, not just the Pope.

With polarization of religion came a social change. There was a shortage in “low-skilled” farm labour in particular. Around 50% of the population had died, after all. Wages shot up and, since no one had got their heads around capitalism at that time, the landowners saw this as rebellion (which it was, in socio-economic terms). In 1349 Edward III fixed the level of wages, by law, at pre-Plague levels. I doubt this had much effect on the ground, but the Crown’s heavy-handed attempts to enforce the law really wound people up. Wages rose regardless, meaning those who found work felt flusher and those who didn’t were driven into larger villages and towns.

You learned, also, at school about the Peasants’ Revolt in June 1381? Well, here’s the link. Put loads of newly enfranchised (in a manner of speaking) workers in towns together and they will want to have their collective voices heard. The spring of 1381 also saw huge storms across England, which many took as omens of change and upheaval…. it’s still sounding familiar. The Peasants’ Revolt may have been suppressed but by 1400 serfdom was abolished. Wat Tyler was dead but he’d got the job done.

Of course, arts and culture changed with the tumultuous times. Big building projects – like Exeter Cathedral – were put on hold because there was no labour or supplies. A high proportion of the older, scholarly, French and Latin speaking “educated” population had died. The barrier for change was lower. Things got less fussy, in art, architecture and writing, allowing vernacular English writers like Chaucer (1343-1400) to take center stage. English (although unrecognizable to most of us today) became the language of the courts, of relationships, of trade. England was English at every level of society.

The Ghost Hotel

Fri, 20 Mar 2020 16:40:00 GMT

I’m going to take a stab at writing about how it feels to close an hotel, ask staff to take unpaid leave (or redundancy) for up to four months and mothball a business that’s taken almost 10 years to perfect.

If you’re not in this business yourself, you’re entitled not to consider the multiple implications of closing a tightly run, staff dependent, independent and proud operation. To be fair, there are multiple different areas of the economy equally affected by Covid-19. Which makes it all the more weird that our government is showing no leadership or sense of urgency whatsoever. As business owners, we’ve been examining all aspects of this crisis, minutely, since early last week. As business owners, we need at this time to show decision-making and confidence in our product and staff. The same is not true of government, which hasn’t yet switched on to the magnitude of this crisis. Playing around in the foothills of business rates relief, or extending SSP for an extra three days are nothing more than headline grabbing, on the cheap, sticking plasters; they don’t even cover the injury. I’m sitting on my hands, waiting for some kind of financial relief where it’s needed most: in the pockets of my staff and the rest of the population who are suddenly without wages.

On the plus side, the business is as financially resilient as it can be, our staff are phenomenally loyal and we think we can get team SH to the other side in as good a shape as possible. We are continuing with our two external projects: the Green Room (our glass garden pavilion) and SevenCentral (our luxury residential apartment next door to the hotel). Charlie, our cult-status painter and decorator is working his way through the bedrooms without interruption. There will be sunshine, summer and parties at the end of this road.

To our regular guests, our lovely locals, to anyone who appreciates hard work, a glamorous outlook and genuine passion, please keep in touch. We’ll be posting updates about life at SH. We might even give you a few little history anecdotes to pass the time. And the time for diggers is past; we’re building real walls now, installing a bathroom, a kitchen: making spaces for you to come back to.

Team SH is here in spirit, if not in person all at the same time. You can ask us questions, make future bookings and plan for later this year anytime. At time of writing we're hoping to re-open by the end of June and we'll keep you updated if this changes.