AN INSPECTOR CALLS
His mission: To test hotel hospitality to the limit
OH, HOW we all adored her in the Seventies and Eighties and, more important, loved her pretty patterned wallpapers and fabrics. We liked the back story, too — a business started on her kitchen table that grew to become a giant of the middle classes.
Then, following Laura Ashley’s death in 1985, aged 60, the company went through all kinds of boardroom changes and is currently owned by a Malaysian company — hence the incongruous Malaysian menu in the bar.
This is one of two Laura Ashley hotels and, sorry to report, but it’s a poor advertisement for the Welsh designer. She liked pretty and this establishment, near Elstree in Herfordshire, doesn’t do pretty. It does tinny mirrors, canned music and carpets in the corridors that are striped in such a way that the dark parts look grubby even though they are perfectly clean. And why bother to have real logs stored next to a fake fireplace?
My room is a standard jobby in the annexe connected via a walkway from the original manor house, parts of which date from 1540. It’s got all the exuberance of a late-night i nt er v i ew wit h Forei gn Secretary Philip Hammond.
There’s a bed, small table, Laura Ashley chair and an ironing board sticking out of a flimsy cupboard.
Not even a small bottle of complimentary water. Instead, there’s a Laura Ashley catalogue, Biro and a pad of paper. The bathroom is no more inspiring. It has one of those bidet/loo combos. Working it sounds complicated, given the manual placed near the pan. There’s a lot of talk about ‘nozzle position’ and ‘cleansing the posterior’.
I’m on a dinner, bed and breakfast rate (£148), for which I get three courses in the main dining room, but there isn’t a soul in it, so I opt for a table in the bar.
I ask to order from the bar food menu rather than the posh one along the corridor. A waiter says he will find out if that’s possible because there might be a supplement. ‘But the bar menu is cheaper than the restaurant menu,’ I tell him.
He goes off to check with the manager, but then a cheery East European waitress cuts through the dross and says I can order what I like from whatever menu I like. Thank you.
And you know what? I go down the incongruous Malaysian route — and then regret it. The beef curry tastes almost as awful as it looks — a brown mess with coconut spread on it like flakes of dandruff.
I notice that a woman sitting on her own at a nearby table has asked for her main course to be removed and, no, she does not want it replaced.
Several conferences are gearing up in the morning. The buffet breakfast i nvolves l ots of stainless steel containers, with undercooked bacon and watery scrambled eggs in them.
At checkout, I’m asked if ‘everything was all right with your stay?’ I mumble and reach for a credit card.
The Manor Hotel Barnet Lane, Elstree WD6 3RE
020 8953 8227, lauraashleyhotels.com Doubles from £99 B&B