Hotels have bars. Right, that’s enough excuse for me to blog this here. I was on Oxford at the weekend, and managed to wander over to where the prison was in my day. It was still there and it still housed people. But these were paying customers.
There was an ongoing joke while I was at Univeristy that St Peter’s College were going to buy the prison and turn it into a hall of residence. And one might think that it takes a bold company to turn a prison into a high class hotel. And what is great about the Malmaison in Oxford is it is well aware that its unique selling point is that it used to be a prison. Hence the retention of what – when divorced from its penitential usage, is a remarkably light, airy and bright atrium. This is photo of A Wing, but you can stay in B and C Wing as well as the Governor’s House. And of course there is a chic bar and restaurant. And if you can’t afford the £130 a night rooms, you can just walk in off the street and wander around during the day as we did yesterday. But we didn’t go to the bar, it was too pricey…