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I invented a new game while staying at the Oddfellows. It went a little like this: leave home; fight your way through rush-hour traffic on surely one of the world’s least enjoyable roads (the A34); pull off said road and drive straight into the car park of a hotel; check-in for the night. Weird game, huh? Well here’s the twist: discover you’ve left your overnight bag at home!
Hilarious indeed. So here I was, in nothing but the clothes I arrived in and flustered to the point of resembling a sort of Clockwise-era John Cleese, that I presented Oddfellows On The Park with a particularly challenging brief: can you entertain me?
Well, the answer is most definitely in the affirmative. Because therein lies one of the joys of Oddfellows: it’s so close to Altrincham that had I really wanted to, I could have simply turned round and picked up the stranded Samsonite. But frankly, once I’d settled into our exquisite room with views over the great autumnal oaks surrounding the hotel – it’s actually located slap-bang in the middle of Bruntwood Park, not that you’d really know it – I had absolutely no desire to rejoin the A34-hugging rat race.
Originally built by an industrialist in 1861, Bruntwood Hall has had a number of uses over the years – an equestrian stud farm and TV location among them (the Sky series Bedlam starring Will Young was filmed here in 2012). It had however never been used as a hotel until Oddfellows Hotels – which has just one other hotel in its collection, in Chester – undertook an 18-month, multi-million-pound restoration of the Gothic mansion that was completed last year.
The result is striking, to say the least. Fascinating items of furniture abound. There’s a life-size horse that doubles as a lamp on the landing (horses are a common theme throughout). The handlebars from a BMW bike were mounted on our bedroom wall like the antlers of a deer. The lights in the Galloping Major restaurant appear to sprout at random from a panel on the wall.
The eye for detail has already seen Oddfellows On The Park become the only hotel outside of London to be accepted by the global consortium Design Hotels.
But this is no staid oil painting of a hotel. We took a walk across the car park to its ‘salon de beauté’, The Pigsty, complete with a mud room where you can enjoy a facial, savour a massage, or literally slap detoxifying mud on your partner.
Perhaps the real star is the food here though. We enjoyed the tasting menu with wine pairing and it was delightfully seasonal, occasionally challenging but overall highly satisfying. Head chef Ross Chatburn only joined in September after three years at Hotel Gotham in Manchester, but he’s already put his stamp on the menu. One early course was composed entirely of different types of tomato, while a pigeon dish came in an autumnal mix of browns, reds, oranges, and purples, to match the park outside the window.
Despite its proximity to the airport, Oddfellows On The Park is not a pre-flight stopover. It’s a special occasion hotel; an oasis of Victorian splendour reimagined in a startlingly original way. It’s well worth negotiating the A34 for – bag or no bag.
Oddfellows On The Park, Cheadle. More info:
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