Hall’s well that ends well
A historic Sutton Coldfield hotel is celebrating 60 years – and the imminent end of lowdown – after a tumultuous 12 months. Its 91-year-old founder tells Nick Horner what drives him to still get out of bed in the morning to run the Midland institution tha
IT is the landmark hotel run by the Midlands’ oldest entrepreneur who is still working. Sitting on the terrace at Sutton Coldfield’s Moor Hall, life is finally returning to normal after a year of turmoil.
Staff are busily serving customers, a crowd is gathered in a function room for a racing event and guests are checking in at reception.
And among the fray there is the man who made Moor Hall the stunning four-star venue it is today.
Michael Webb, known as Mick, bought Moor Hall 60 years ago this week, the idea sparked by a trip to the ski slopes of Austria.
“We went skiing twice a year and took the children to St Anton in Austria” said Mr Webb. “We went in 1960 and I said wouldn’t it be great to have something like this in Sutton?”
Moor Hall was then a ‘gentlemen’s residence for former soldiers’ – a cross between an ‘old people’s home and hotel’.
The original hall dates back to the 15th century and there has been a building on the site since the 1300s.
Its most famous owner was Bishop John Vesey, in the time of King Henry VIII, who once taught the future Queen Mary there.
The hall has had several incarnations, with the current venue built in 1903, by Ansell’s Brewery owner, Colonel Edward Ansell.
The Ansell family auctioned it in 1930 to the Streather builders family.
Finally it was bought from Mrs Streather for ‘just’ £35,000 by Mr Webb and Whittalls Wines on June 21, 1961.
The entrepreneur quickly turned it into a late-night drinking venue and it became a private members club – chiefly so it could serve alcohol on Sundays.
Back then Moor Hall had 17 bedrooms (three with bathrooms), and a further 22 staff bedrooms.
It now has 83 bedrooms, six conference rooms, two restaurants and a leisure centre and spa – and is worth £11 million.
But Mr Webb, who is 91 years old, did not start out his career in the hospitality business. Far from it.
He had a tough time as a boy, having been to 14 schools by the age of 14.
He moved around the country with his father Arthur, who was a salesman for the Daimler Bus Company.
His family finally settled in Streetly, with his father serving in the RAF during the Second World War. Mr Webb went to Streetly Youth Club, where he met his first wife Janet.
With a disjointed school life, he studied Pitman’s shorthand at a college in Walsall and became a reporter. First on the Walsall Times, then the Sutton Coldfield News and the Sports Argus.
But after a couple of year’s reporting, his father’s entrepreneurial spirit prompted him to change tack.
“I went from being on the journalists’ floor to the circulation floor,” Mr Webb said. “I was going around selling newspapers to newsagents.
“And I then started a manufacturing agency, initially selling car parts to garages. I was pretty successful in the Midlands and took on reps.
“I went into business with friends with car showrooms and petrol stations. I had an exhaust centre business.
“I had an aircraft company, training people to fly. I learned to fly while I was a manufacturers’ agent. I had eight or nine reps all over the country and I wanted an aircraft to get around like an air taxi.
“The owner of an aircraft said don’t buy the aircraft – buy the company!
“I also owned Broads Travel.”
At one stage Mr Webb had 14 businesses under his wing but soon decided Moor Hall Hotel was the one to focus on. He said: “I had this place 10 years and proceeded to sell everything in the group except the travel business and concentrated on Moor Hall Hotel.
“I liked to see people happy and provide things for them. We have function rooms and a leisure centre.
“Up until 2000 we were only investing in this.”
While Moor Hall was the place to party in the 1960s as a private club, in the 1970s it finally became a hotel, with, a coach house, stables and kennels transformed into 31 more bedrooms.
In 1991 former Aston Villa and then England manager Graham Taylor opened the new fitness centre and returned in 2003 to open the leisure centre.
And it was Mr Webb was instrumental in bringing the well known Best Western hotels group from the US to the UK.
The group began as a chain of independent hotels which joined forces by recommending each other.
Mr Webb even bought the Sea Castle hotel in Treasure Island, Florida. He said: “I like their attitude to business.”
He was national chairman of Best Western when he was 50 and helped recruit hotels in France Italy and Spain to the group.
Daughter Angela Burns has been chairman too.
Famous visitors to Moor Hall include pop band Take That during their comeback tour of 2010, as former Villa club owner Doug Ellis, who lived in Sutton.
But the last year has been the hotel’s hardest.
“There has never been anything on this scale,” Mrs Burns said. “You can’t even plan for what happened.”
Bookings cancelled, staff on furlough, the large venue falling silent.
Mrs Burns and her son and daughter took it in turns to move in to ‘house sit’ it.
They opened a community shop for six weeks selling those elusive toilet rolls, which the venue had plenty of.
It was shut from the first lockdown until July 4, but since then has stayed open through two more lockdowns with business travellers allowed to stay.
Mrs Burns said: “It was a big shock to the system, walking down the corridor and there not being a single person in the place.
“We furloughed staff. A big part of our business in the summer is weddings. But all are back now.”
The venue is now as busy as it is allowed to be, but with social distancing it is not back to its pre-pandemic levels.
But customers are coming back and Moor Hall has 60 weddings booked before the end of September.
The venue is popular with different generations of families tying the knot there.
Mr Webb said: “It’s an iconic business in Sutton Coldfield. MP Andrew Mitchell described it as a real community asset for the town’.”
Asked why he was continuing to work in his 90s, Mr Webb said: “If I didn’t have anything to do, I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning! If ever I have seen an opportunity I take one.”
I liked to see people happy and provide things for them
Michael Webb