HPA Completes £4M Hotel Renovation Project
A luxury hotel is receiving rave reviews after opening its doors in Cumbria, following a £4 million renovation project, managed by HPA. The Forest Side in Grasmere is the third luxury hotel in Andrew Wildsmith’s portfolio and is already winning awards after just four months of being open.
The Grade II Listed hotel has been given a new lease of life following the two-year-long project which involved restoring and conserving the building’s original features. The hotel renovation project was managed by HPA’s team of specialist hotel architects.
The hotel’s 20 bedrooms feature bespoke beds designed exclusively for Wildsmith Hotels, made with more than 10,000 springs and its carpets are made using the wool from Herdwick sheep – the entire order for the carpets totalled more than 2,000 fleeces.
Complete with a lounge, bar, and restaurant headed up by award-winning South Cumbrian chef Kevin Tickle, Andrew describes the hotel as having ‘Cumbrian luxury’.
Andrew, who also runs The Ryebeck in Bowness and Hipping Hall in Kirkby Lonsdale, said: “The response to The Forest Side has been great, we have had a lot of positive feedback from guests and we have had some great reviews in the national press. Location was the key thing for me, I wanted something right in the centre of the Lake District. Grasmere has got everything you could want from this part of the world. We wanted to do something a bit different – for example, we have a big vegetable garden which allows us to grow our own vegetables, which is really wonderful.
“We wanted to do something which impresses people and that can be hard to do sometimes but we have already had guests booking their second stays. Our staff play a huge part in that too, we endeavour to employ good people who deliver excellent customer service.”
The hotel’s restaurant recently won Britain’s ‘best kept secret’ at Tatler’s Annual Restaurant Awards.
Richard Parker, a director of HPA who oversaw the hotel renovation, said: “This has been an exciting project to be involved with. It shows how hotels can be transformed through sympathetic restoration and extension.”
To explore our range of leisure projects, click here.