Hotel Du Vin - Edinburgh

In their determination to find unusual, quirky sites for their hotels, the owners of Hotel du Vin and Malmaison have kept an open mind, converting buildings which the squeamish might have considered unsuitable for hotel use. At Malmaison Oxford, guests can spend the night in prison cells where inmates would once have counted down the days to their release in notches carved on the walls. The Birmingham Hotel du Vin is housed in the city’s former eye hospital, some of its bedrooms created from the operating theatres where patients went under the knife.

The site of the latest Hotel du Vin has a similarly intriguing history. Originally constructed in the 18th century as a poor house by Samuel Neilson, William McVey and James Heriot, this building, nestled deep in Edinburgh’s Old Town, soon became better known as ‘Bedlam’, the city’s lunatic asylum. Conditions were notoriously awful. Patients were treated as inmates, locked in cold stone-flagged cells. It was here that the poet Robert Ferguson was interned suffering from depression, and later died following a fall, at the age of just 24. Despite his short life, Ferguson’s works are now recognised as amongst the great Scottish poems for their influence on those two other famous Scottish Roberts – Burns and Stevenson. The building later became a science laboratory during the World Wars, and then Edinburgh’s Blood Donation Centre, before falling into disrepair in the late Nineties until its purchase by Hotel du Vin’s owners MWB in 2006.

Today, conditions are considerably better for those who spend a night within its stone walls. Bedlam and blood transfusions have been replaced with bedrooms and a bistro, after another Scottish Robert – Robert Cook, CEO of Malmaison / Hotel du Vin – rescued the building with its £2m acquisition in June 2006, followed by an £8m investment in its reinvention as a boutique hotel.

MWB enlisted Michael Phillips Architects to carry out initial concepts for the design, based on their work for other hotels in the group, with Curious Architecture further adapting the designs and ensuring they adhered to Scottish planning regulations. Thomas Johnstone Ltd were the fit-out contractor.

The site comprises a compact triangle of three arterial roads in the centre of Edinburgh. Elements of the original building were restored, with a newbuild structure created behind. Major excavations were necessary to form the basement, with reinforced concrete on the ground floor and a steel frame system inserted above. A traditional timber pitched roof was created with dormers, slates and leadwork in keeping with the retained facade. The structure has been internally reconfigured and extensively refurbished to accommodate a bar, bistro, wine tasting area, meeting rooms and ten bedrooms. The newbuild elements house a further 37 bedrooms, the reception area, a whisky snug, staff quarters, and a central courtyard with smoking shelter. According to Curious Architecture, this courtyard is at the heart of the design concept: “The new extensions are carefully orchestrated around the motifs, window proportions and general detailing of the existing elevations. The courtyard is the hub off which the arena of public and private space revolves.”

Entering the building via the courtyard, the reception leads onto the extensive public areas. The split-level bistro is open to the rafters, which accommodate suspended glass ‘wine boxes’. A variety of spaces spin off from this cloister. A feature staircase takes guests up to the mezzanine level bar area, beyond which lies the wine tasting room, with a ‘La Roche’ wine tasting table as its centrepiece. A suspended walkway leads from here to the ‘wine boxes.’ Other nooks and crannies in timber and stone house meeting rooms and lounge areas.

The interiors, by Hotel du Vin’s in-house design team, are typical of the brand, with various hallmark design features: banquette seating and Bampton Design dining chairs in the bistro; a large chandelier of inverted wine glasses suspended above reception; subtle tartan fabrics and battered leather Chesterfields in the whisky snug; powerful showers and Vi-Spring beds in the rooms; free-standing rolltop baths and walk-in showers in many of the suites.

Local colour has been added in the form of specially commissioned photography by Peter Lavery of Handheld Image – wine-related still lifes in reception, photographs of whisky distillers at work in the snug and architectural shots of the surrounding area. More specific to Edinburgh are the eerie still-life images of medical school paraphernalia in one of the meeting rooms – a reference to the notorious bodysnatchers Burke & Hare after whom the room is named.

Hotel du Vin & Bistro
11 Bristo Place, Edinburgh EH1 1EZ
Tel: +44 (0)131 247 4900
www.hotelduvin.com

Rooms    47 guestrooms
Dining    Hotel du Vin Bistro
Drinking    Hotel du Vin Bar, Whisky Snug,
Leisure  La Roche wine tasting room
Facilities    2 meeting rooms