Located just four miles from its city centre, Derby has a luxurious new 5-bedroom Country House hotel to offer its visitors.
While The Kedleston Country House boutique hotel enjoyed a successful ‘soft opening’ in mid-October, it is now looking forward to its first full year of operation – and to welcoming overnight guests to the hotel, anyone with a taste for good food to its restaurant, and beer aficionados to a bar which adds further credibility to Derby’s claim that it is the “Real Ale Capital of Britain”.
Now operated by the Derby Brewing Company, which was founded in 2004 by Trevor Harris, the hotel today possesses style and history in equal measures.
Guests who step through its doors enter not only a Grade II* listed building, but also a cleverly thought-out world of comfort, quality…and plenty of quirky touches.
Historically, the building was a former posting house and coaching inn standing on a “turnpike” that had been relocated by Sir Nathaniel Curzon in 1759. The hotel was then called the New Inn, and it served visitors who came to take the waters at Quarndon as well as the sulphur baths to the south west of the hotel.
It was designed by Robert Adam in 1762 at the same time he was working on Sir Nathaniel Curzon’s (later 1st Lord Scarsdale) stately home, Kedleston Hall. Built to Adam’s design, the three-storey hotel included walled gardens, which were probably used as kitchen gardens to serve the kitchens.
Its cellars also contain a cell, in which prisoners being escorted to Derby to be hung the next day, would spend their last nights.
The New Inn closed in 1887, and became a farmhouse; but during the 1970s the building was reinstated as a hotel which, at the time, was frequented by many famous faces, including Derby City footballers and their manager of the time, Brian Clough.
As tastes changed, the hotel closed its doors to the public once again in 2010, and remained boarded up until the Derby Brewing Company (which runs three popular real ale pubs in and around Derby – The Tap in Derwent Street; The Greyhound in Friar Gate; and The Queen’s Head in Little Eaton) started its lengthy four-year process of renovation and rejuvenation.
The Kedleston Country House is today listed as Grade II* – gaining the star for an Adam’s fireplace, relocated from Kedleston Hall, which takes centre stage in one of the chilled-out lounges.
Its bar, meanwhile, boasts 85 different wines, a host of “boutique” spirits, its own blends of gins, an eclectic cocktail list, and some of the very best real ales in Britain.
Everything in the hotel is done with a quirky twist, and the emphasis is on individuality, history and quality.
The interiors, designed by Plum & Ashby, offer a genuine hunting lodge atmosphere to the place; and the five bedrooms are all luxuriously appointed, with a larder of goodies ranging from fine wine to sherbet dib-dabs! Each visitor also gets a miniature of The Kedleston No.7 Country House Gin to take home with them…or to enjoy in their room.
Downstairs, breakfast, lunches and dinners are served in an 80-cover Orangery overlooking the original Adam garden, and 65-cover Dining Room.
As well as being just a 10 minute drive or taxi-ride from Derby’s city centre, the hotel is perfectly placed as a base for exploring The Peak District, and to visit the neighbouring National Trust property, Kedleston Hall.
Bed-and-breakfast prices for an overnight stay at The Kedleston Country House start from £150 per room, based on two people sharing.
For further details visit http://thekedleston.co.uk. The full range of accommodation in-and-around Derby, meanwhile, can be found at http://www.visitderby.co.uk/stay/.