Francis Hotel Bath: Old-world glamour meets new-school cool
We braved the heatwave and the crowds to take a long weekend in Bath, a city that’s balances its ancient history with a tourist industry precision-engineered to meet the needs of the modern traveller – not least the newly renovated Francis Hotel Bath.
As someone who lived in Scotland for more than a decade, it’s hard not to draw parallels between Bath and Edinburgh, from the grand old buildings to the general air of fringe frivolity. I visited in the midst of the heatwave, when Bath had the unmistakable air of a holiday town, its streets filled with meandering tourists occasionally caught up in a bottleneck caused by a bloke balancing on the top rung of a ladder juggling swords.
Where to stay: Francis Hotel
Francis Hotel is located on the south side of Queen Square in a salubrious neighbourhood filled with boutique shops and quaint looking restaurants. On my visit Queen Square was given over to a petanque tournament, with local businesses in branded T-shirts tossing boules across the scorched earth and downing pints of beer from a circle of food and drink stalls.
But pass through the wood and brass revolving doors into the Francis Hotel and it’s another world. The building is a row of seven converted townhouses, whose 98 bedrooms have this year completed a £15m renovation. The ground floor is a vast, uninterrupted corridor featuring the restaurant at one end and a lounge-cum-bar at the other, which is a great place to while away an hour or two cooling down with a beer and listening to the distant roars suggesting someone just made a successful petanque shot.
The rooms are reached through a series of disorientating corridors featuring garish carpets and wallpaper, which make you feel like you’ve wandered into an abstract painting (an effect made more pronounced by the fact the floors are not quite level beneath the carpet; I swear it wasn’t the beer…). Step inside, though, and you find smart, stylish rooms decorated in the style of a modern country house. Mine was painted a pleasant shade of sage with burnt orange furnishings and a botanical accent wall. It’s cool and comfortable, and feels a million miles from the crowded streets outside the windows.
There’s a spa here too, where guests can book treatments with Francis Hotel’s partners GAIA Skincare and QMS Medicosmetics, including a private thermal spa suite that offers “purifying steam, playful cleansing bubbles and nourishing muds” as well as hot-and-cold therapy in the form of sprays and jets.
What to eat: Emberwood
Located in the same building as Francis Hotel you will find Emberwood, which comfortably qualifies as one of the best restaurants in town. You can pick from the buzzy, art deco-inspired brasserie inside or a row of more secluded tables outside, which, in the summer at least, offer an intimate – and shaded – place to eat. The menu is modern British-ish (there’s an odd schnitzel on there muddying the waters a little), with chef David Hazell banging the drum for locality and seasonality. I had a giant portion of steak tartare with beef tallow crisps, a zippy little crab on toast and a nicely cooked bavette steak.
The restaurant also has a special relationship with their main wine supplier, with an excellent bottle of Petit Chablis bearing the restaurant’s insignia. Well worth spending a languorous evening watching people sway merrily out of the park.
Emberwood also offers an afternoon tea based around sparkling tea brand Saicho with hand-blended teas from Bath’s Gillards and optional wine pairing.
What to do in Bath
Bath has been a spa town since Roman times and is well prepared for visitors. If you’re here for a long weekend, spend a morning exploring the warren of little streets. I stumbled across an artists’ studio called The Worldbuilders of Queen Street where science fiction writers and artists had taken up residence and will happily chat to you about their creations. On the same street there are two great pubs: The Gin Bar and The Raven, both of which are great places to bed in for an afternoon.
The main tourist attraction is the Roman Baths, which are spectacular, even if they aren’t shy about the number of visitors they allow through the doors at any given time.
• Rooms at The Francis Hotel start from £125 per night. Visit the website; The spa is available for both guests and non guests – visit the website; To book Emberwood, visit the website