City hotels have largely given up on the public room. The lobby has become a corridor with chairs in it, arranged so that nobody stays longer than the check-in takes, and the bar has been pushed toward whatever generates a second drink.
The Fenwick has gone the other way. The former banking hall — six windows, each the better part of twenty feet, stone mullions, a floor that was there when the money was — has been left as one room and furnished as a salon. Deep sofas in bottle-green velvet, low tables, lamps rather than downlights, and no music at all before six.
People sit in it. That sounds like nothing. It is the entire reason to stay here.
The salon
Morning is the best of it. The windows face east onto a street that catches sun for about two hours, and by half past eight there are perhaps a dozen people in a room built for eighty, reading and working and not being approached by anybody.
Service in the salon is deliberately slow. Coffee arrives when it arrives. If you want to be looked after briskly, this will irritate you; if you want to sit somewhere for three hours without being turned over, it is close to perfect.
The rarest amenity a hotel can offer is a large room, well lit, where nobody needs you to leave.
The rooms
Thirty-two, and honestly the least interesting part. They are competent, quiet, warm in colour, with good beds and blackout that works. The bathrooms are new and well judged. Nothing about them is memorable.
Two things worth knowing. The rooms on the second floor retain the original ceiling height and are noticeably better than those above, where the conversion inserted a floor. And the six rooms facing the rear look at a light well; they are cheaper for a reason.
Food
A short menu, done properly. Six or seven things, most of them Scottish, none of them explained at length by the staff. The fish is the strength. The wine list is compact and priced with restraint, which in a hotel of this kind is almost a political statement.
Breakfast is à la carte and included in most rates. It is served until eleven, which anyone who has ever travelled for work will recognise as a genuine kindness.
Value
Not cheap, and not trying to be. Rates sit at the upper end of the city’s independent hotels and roughly level with the international chains a few streets away, which is where the comparison actually matters: for the same money you can have a room in a building that means nothing, or this.
Midweek in winter the rate falls by around a third, and the salon is emptier, which is the ideal condition.
Verdict
The rooms are fine. The building is the point, and specifically one room in it. Book the second floor, come midweek in the dark half of the year, and give yourself a morning with nothing in it.
