The Hind Hotel is a 1600s Grade II listed hotel centrally located in the large market town of Wellingborough in Northamptonshire and is well known for housing the English military and political leader Oliver Cromwell and his officers prior to the Battle of Naseby in 1645. In later years the hotel is known for being in perfect proximity to the F1 at Silverstone.

This 17^th Century coaching inn was in great need of an exterior and interior overhaul and the new incoming owners’ motivation for the hotel bedroom furniture refurbishment was to increase the hotel’s star rating from a struggling 3-star to a nearer 4-star environment with these improvements.

The historic independent hotel was recently bought by a local businessman after many years under investment. It was tired, jaded and the TripAdvisor reviews were certainly reflective of this with each passing year.

With the nature of the building’s unusual room shapes, alcoves and sloping roof lines, the project required a bespoke joinery package of casegoods to suit individual room restrictions.

The bespoke hotel bedroom furniture package for each of the 34 guest rooms consisted of a:

• Desk with TCMF pull out drawer tray
• Wall mounted wardrobe
• Framed square vanity mirror
• Dressing mirror
• Upholstered headboard
• Bedside shelf or table
• Luggage rack

The hotel owner wanted the guest rooms to have a more contemporary design within the traditional setting – the fitted furniture was to be a functional extension of the room, robust and with clean lines.

Furnotel’s Product Design team designed a bespoke flyover padded headboard with integral bedside lighting and C-shaped bible boxes which sat clear of the floor. Freestanding bedside tables with a single shelf were used with the “zip and link” version of the headboards. The design of the floating bedsides meant that they were perfect for easy cleaning, sitting off the floor and leaving enough space for housekeeping to vacuum underneath.

The hotel headboards were manufactured for single rooms, standard doubles, zip and link doubles, and family room triple flyover headboard configurations. The panels had a Dark American Walnut décor and the central upholstered panels were covered in a mix of Pewter and Putty colored vinyl’s supplied by Panaz.

The wardrobe was a wall hung open carcass design with a tapered side panel to give the smaller rooms as much circulation space as possible. Along with a single blanket shelf and hanging rail to accommodate the guest’s belongings.

The bedroom desk was a simple ‘up and over’ design with a soft close draw tray to discreetly hold the tea and coffee making facilities.

The client was particularly concerned about protecting the corners of the hotel room furniture from impact from luggage. With this in mind, to the corners of the desks, bedsides and front of the luggage racks a chrome corner detail was added. This acted as a unifying design feature, but also protected furniture pieces that were likely to receive the most punishment and help lengthen the lifespan of the furniture.

The Donatella bedroom desk chairs and Trinity sofa beds in the larger family rooms were provided by our trusted sister company, Lugo: Hospitality Furniture.

The desk chair and sofa legs were also stained in a dark walnut to match the fitted hotel room furniture and both upholstered in Crazy Cement by Warwick Fabrics.

Because of the age of the building and having no lifts, all hotel bedroom furniture had to be carefully handled and navigated though the building’s small corridors with tight turning circles and narrow stairwells to make sure all pieces arrived to their rooms safely.

Due to each guest room’s peculiarities of sloping roofs, beams, un-even timber floors and alcoves, Furnotel had to use their furniture installation teams expertise to carry out a great deal of scribing onsite in order to manipulate the casegoods and shape components to neatly fit the contours of each wall.

The project was delivered and installed in seven phases over 12 weeks due to the hotel being relatively small and the client only being able to decommission five guest rooms at any one time.

Following the hotel’s 34-bedroom revamp, customers are now writing far more positive TripAdvisor reviews which has dramatically improved ratings as intended, resulting in repeat business for the hotel and improved customer experiences.