The De Rougemont Manor Hotel in Great Warley is set to be turned into homes.
Since 1968, the site - formerly known as the New World Inn - has operated as a nightclub, then hotel and restaurant and wedding venue after being bought by Ian Hilton (no relation to the Hilton hotel chain).
But for the first 93 years of its life, it served as a home for the Brentwood gentry - the well-heeled Heseltine family and their 40 staff. So well-heeled in fact that the adjacent St Mary the Virgin church was built by the family in 1902 at a cost in today’s money of over £8m.
The current owners, the Hiltons, have found it no longer viable as a hotel and sisters Davine, Victoria and brother Jason are excited to transform ‘Goldings’ as it was first known in 1875 and the former stables into apartments and houses. A small number of additional homes will be built where the current car parking is.
The family say that budget hotels and AirBnB have heavily affected traditional quality hotels and of course, the final straw was the pandemic. The hotel's occupancy rates in 2020 and into 2021 have been zero, still with costly overheads.
Jason , 55, said: “I grew up in this place. My sister and I used to run around the corridors when we were tiny and it has huge importance to us and so letting it go has not been an easy decision but is a necessary one as it’s simply not viable as a hotel venue any longer.
‘We have been approached by a number of developers and hospitality companies, all of which wanted to rip the heart and soul out of the building and seemed to have no regard for its important history.
"Instead, we’ve partnered with Redington on the basis that they are preserving and enhancing the original integrity of De Rougemont and the Heseltine family legacy. We want to be able to drive past in the future and remain proud of what we built here over a 50-year period’.
David Burne of Redington Capital added: “This creates much needed housing for Brentwood people and really will be a development for us, the Hilton family and the locality to be proud of”.
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