Malmaison Hotel, Oxford, United Kingdom
Malmaison Hotel 4 Stars
"The Malmaison Oxford offers an arresting conversion of a former prison, with touches of luxe and plenty of seductive Malmaison drama."
Hotel Overview
Review of Malmaison Hotel, by Fiona Duncan
No self-respecting hip hotel group can hold its head up these days unless it has at least one address in an unusual building. Breweries, churches and hospitals have all been given new leases of life and Malmaison, which specialises in slick city hotels at affordable prices, already has a sorting office, a seaman's mission and a warehouse.
And now, in the Malmaison Oxford, it has added a prison. A word of caution: book by phone, rather than online, to avoid the website's naff prison cliche "attention all inmates - there's no parking for your getaway car" and so on (actually there is, but it costs £20 a night).
I decided on a bus to get me to Oxford, a bad move as a road accident meant that the journey took four hours instead of one. A wartime spirit prevailed on board, orchestrated by the redoubtable Mrs Mills, a lady whose admiration for the Sunday Telegraph was matched only by that for her husband's formidable culinary skills.
A hoot and a saint, she insisted on driving me to the hotel from Oxford bus station, where she had left her car. As she ushered me in to the fearsome building (a Norman castle, and a jail until 1996) I felt like a first-time prisoner, and the website jokes began to strike home. "Don't leave me here, Mrs Mills," I wanted to say, "I'm innocent."
I'm in two minds about Oxford Prison's transformation. On the one hand, it has been superbly executed, and the A Wing atrium (make sure you have a room here) - three floors of former cells, landings and iron staircases around a huge oblong open space - is truly impressive.
The bedrooms and bathrooms, each comprising three cells, are comfortable and attractive in a fashionably masculine, black-and-beige sort of way, with soft linen on excellent beds, deep free-standing baths, shower heads the size of sunflowers, well-stocked mini bars and free internet access. And yet...only 10 years ago this was a run-down, overcrowded prison. The slop buckets would have been carried over today's softly carpeted landings; and even now the only natural light to your room is a slit too high to reach, and the original metal-lined cell doors are studded with dents from furious kicks and beating fists.
"How do you feel?" I asked my already installed husband. "Guilty," he said, "not because it's so easy to imagine that nine prisoners once occupied this space, but because it's so easy to put on the CD player, open the wine and forget them."
If your imagination deserts you, ask to see the two cells, complete with bunks, which have been left untouched: a sobering sight.
Dinner with friends in the convivial Brasserie, once used for solitary confinement, was a jolly affair aided by charming waiters and bar staff. We would doubtless have eaten better chez Mrs Mills, though the food was passable enough for a mid-price city hotel. At any rate, the place was humming, especially in the laid-back, dramatically dark Visitors' Room, with its clusters of sofas.
The morning brought a patchy, unexceptional breakfast, ranging from watery, stewed coffee, which had to be sent back twice, to a perfectly cooked poached egg; and more enthusiastic staff, one of whom even carried our luggage to our getaway car.
Copyright 2007 The Hotel Guru
Facilities
Rooms
94Awards
"Hot List" Conde Nast Traveller 06
Who stays here?
The Malmaison Oxford is perfect for a romantic stay, or even for the adventurous traveller who enjoys a bit of personality in their hotel.
Come for...
- Original architecture
- The Visitor's Room - perfectly dramatic lounge space
- Views of dreaming spires from the terrace
Not Suitable for...
- The innocent
Children
Cots and extra beds are available.
Eating in
The Malmaison Oxford's seductive restaurant serves the county’s finest from a home-grown & local menu by candlelight.
The Press Say
“A prison until the mid-1990s but today's inmates can expect a considerably cushier stay than those of old.” Conde Nast Traveller 06
"The Malmaison Oxford is a comfortable, stylish stay in a great location." The New York Times 06
Reviews
Review of Malmaison Oxford, by Angela Moore
Oxford is a wonderful old city but is surprisingly short on good places to stay. This has been solved with the opening of Malmaison Oxford. Housed in a converted former prison near Oxford Castle, it's a quite fascinating site and a nice irony in turning a jail into a luxury hotel.
The facilities
Malmaison Oxford's premises retain many original features, overlaid with the Malmaison eye for dramatic décor and touches of luxe. Under the vaulted stone ceilings of the lobby and reception sit enormous bishops' chairs. These splashes of scarlet and plummy purple velvet leaven the bare stone walls. Fat candles and fresh red roses look inviting in various nooks and crannies.
Downstairs, the former underground cells (which must have been ghastly) are now a contemporary brasserie, with stripped wooden floors and smart camel and chocolate-coloured chairs. It's as atmospheric as all get-out, especially as it is all lit by that moody Mal lighting, which makes everyone look fantastic.
The Visitors' Room (lounge) takes the baroque drama up several notches. Once the Prison Chapel, it's now entirely black - dark wooden floors, black walls, and high black church-esque ceiling. Pods of low seating (more velvet) lie in dim pools of light and enormously oversized fringed lamps hang from the ceiling. There's even a black pool table. It's the kind of room in which a burlesque devil could appear in a puff of smoke (though he'd have to be a pretty stylish feller).
The rooms
Malmaison Oxford's 94 rooms are spread across five sections: A-Wing, C-Wing, New Road, the House of Correction and the Governors House. A-Wing and C-Wing have cell-style rooms and the House of Correction and the Governor's House are in a rather more conventional Malmaison style.
Already, the A-Wing is winning most fans: this is the section that's most recognisably a cell block. Actually, it's more half-prison, half-cathedral, with multiple floors linked by metal gangways and two vast arched windows at either end. Each room in this section takes up what was formerly three cells - the thought that each room space would have housed up to nine prisoners, and the prison only closed in 1996, is faintly disturbing.
Designers of Malmaison Oxford have retained or restored many original features. Walls are two-and-a-half feet thick, there are iron bars on windows and some rooms have the original iron cell doors, complete with dents from former prisoners banging on them.
Happily, prison similarities end there. There are comfy Malmaison beds, luscious fabrics and heavy, sink-into pillows. Bathrooms are gorgeous: either a walk-in shower with an elephantine showerhead or, in some rooms, both shower and freestanding tub-style baths. Technology is tip-top throughout this luxury hotel.
For a real blow-out, though, book the split-level suite in the Governor's House. There's a sitting room on a mezzanine level, complete with cherry-red freestanding bathtub. The bedroom's miles below the mezzanine and from down there, the ceilings seem dizzyingly high. You have to close the top curtains with a pulley arrangement. The Mal colours fly high here in this luxury suite - dark wood, chocolate suede, a delicious profusion of striped silk cushions, soft woollen throws, chic arrangements of lilies. There's more of that moody Mal lighting, too, which makes for a very romantic atmosphere.
Best of all, though, is the suite's private screening room, which comes complete with overhead projector and Dolby surround sound. (In fact, the suite has about eight square metres of viewing space in it - the big screen, a flatscreen tv upstairs and another giant flatscreen tv in the bedroom.) Dim the lights, hop onto the couch, wrap up in a throw. Comfortable? Malmaison Oxford is the sort of place you'd want a life sentence in.