GREENWICH’s newest hotel is just weeks away from opening its doors to the public.
The new 145-room Mercure Greenwich hotel in Catherine Grove will welcome its first guests in November following a total transformation.
The 1930s building was originally a Metropolitan Police section house but had been empty for years until it was purchased by Periquin Ltd, owned by Lady Rona Delves Broughton.
The revamp has seen extensive internal refurbishment and redesign with the addition of two new floors at the top to create penthouse suites overlooking London.
The new four star hotel, where standard room rates start at £139 per night, also has a glamorous bar and restaurant which will both be open to the wider public as well as hotel guests.
Sales and Marketing Manager, Rachel Osborn, said: “We are thrilled to be opening The Mercure London Greenwich Hotel in such a marvellous part of London.
“The hotel design and refurbishment reflects our exceptional surroundings and the team here are ready and looking forward delivering true hospitality to all of our guests.”
First Look Inside The New Mercure Greenwich
Restaurant
The bar – open to the public as well as guests
View from one side of a penthouse suite
Hotel exterior
It’s a beautiful building and it’s good to see it getting a new lease of life.
It’s just a shame that Greenwich Plannig are utter morons. It’s so obvious that the building should have had a one-storey glass addition and that the two-storey penthouse is bloated and out of scale.
We can’t blame hotel operators who will push for the most volume they can get for the money. But how good it would be if the people paid a salary to preserve the ambience of Greenwich actually gave a damn.
Rob – This reads a bit like an advert. Anything to declare?
I strongly agree with Pedro. A one-story penthouse would have been in proportion and attractive; the two-story penthouse is top-heavy and rather gangly. Greenwich Planning department failing yet again to do its job.
To those who might counter that they do not have the statutory powers to judge on aesthetics – that’ simply not the case.
I’ve recently had a series of interactions with the Planning Department of another Council (outside of London), and not only are they much more professional than Greenwich planners, they are not afraid to use their statutory powers to refuse ugly or otherwise inappropriate planning applications.
It’s been a real eye-opener about just how bad Greenwich Planning is at doing its job – and raises real question about how ‘captured’ Greenwich Planners seem to be by developers and their lobbyists, among whom we have to include local MP Nick Raynsford. Raynsford earned a cool £110,000 from his directorships in the construction sector in 2011 alone, according to the Parliamentary Register of Members’ Interests.
Important to note also that Raynsford’s ‘Senior Researcher and Case Worker’ is Cllr Alex Grant, Chair of the Borough’s Planning Board from 2006 until 2010.
the photo also omits the cheesy plastic logo, which looks like it was crafted in a primary school art class. Which Mercure doesn’t fit to all its hotels, of course, only in places they can get away with it.
Don’t forget, folks, that the same developers also want to demolish the Victorian block in front of the hotel, so we can get more modern (as in smaller, fitting four houses where the Victorians managed three) pastiche buildings of a similar standard to those already gracing this part of Greenwich.
Did anyone else notice that monstrosity which has just been unveiled on Greenwich High Road opp the entrance to Burgos Grove? Truly one of the ugliest new buildings I have ever seen anywhere. And given the state of the new Greenwich pier ticket hall that’s saying something. What on earth has happened to that part of SE10 – its being wrecked by our lenient Council.
I live on Blackheath Road and from the back my house over looks the old girls school. So the new hotel now provides an interesting background to my view.
The school has that beautiful victorian pointed windows and then we have the slightly more brutal square block aesthetic with the original red brick work to the left and then the new glass addition sweeps to the right. From our lower and middle floors you can’t see the base of the glass so it visually sits on the roof of the old school which makes for a rather beautiful juxtaposition. From my sons bedroom we can see a lot more and with Canary Wharf in the background the view is pretty good.
It looks wonderful at dusk as the new strip lighting around the top of the glass box.
I must say I do think it looks pretty top heavy from Catherine Grove but I do think that the original building can take it due to its already robust almost brutalist architecture.
I’am aware of the sign which looks pretty ugly but then looking at other signage in the area its not that different. Although it is higher up.
I’m glad this building is being put to good use and it seems to have had an effect on other buildings on Catherine Grove leading up to Blackheath Road.
However someone is trying to reopen that dodgy club/ pub next to the indian. I really hope this does not happen as we had so much trouble on our street when that place was open.
Do you mean the black-tiled one, with the rust-coloured end section?
There’s a similar black-tiled building for Camberwell Art College which looks great. But that one has great detailing – on this one the tiling is badly-done, so it fails in what it attempts. More so when you look at the mess around it.
As Derek Smalls of Spinal Tap put it, It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.
That is very interesting about Nick Raynsford.
I agree with the poster who said about the buidling opposite Burgos Grove, the site of the old Petrol Station then car wash. It is a hideous building. Is it a block of flats? There are hardly any windows.
On the other hand, I dont particularly mind the two storey glass roof extension. In my opinion, it looks ok. But how many hotels are there in Greenwich now? 15 years ago it was just the Ibis – 4 large ones have opened since.