Detailed Review
Super slinky rooms with innovative touches like free broadband? Guilty as charged. Divine dining? Guilty your honour. Spectacular bars that will hold anyone for a night? Guilty. A passion for astounding vino and daring cocktails? Guilty as sin. A steal for those who demand uncompromising style. This time we’re taking no prisoners. That’s Mal Life.
Press Quotes
“...a prison until the mid-1990s but today’s inmates can expect a considerably cushier stay than those of old.” Conde Nast 06
Independent Reviews
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"Arresting conversion of former prison; touches of luxe and plenty of seductive Malmaison drama"
Malmaison Oxford
By Angela Moore
Oxford is a wonderful old city but is surprisingly short on good places to stay. This has been solved with the opening of the newest link in the Malmaison chain. The hotel is in a converted former prison near Oxford castle - a fascinating site, and nice irony in turning a jail into a luxury hotel. (Lots of rope for Mal wit - the DVD in our room was The Shawshank Redemption...)
The buildings retain many original features, overlaid with the Malmaison eye for dramatic décor and touches of luxe. Under the vaulted stone ceilings of the lobby and reception sit enormous bishops’ chairs; splashes of scarlet and plummy purple velvet leaven the bare stone walls. Fat candles and fresh red roses look inviting in various nooks and crannies.
Downstairs, the former underground cells (which must have been ghastly) are now a contemporary brasserie, with stripped wooden floors and smart camel and chocolate-coloured chairs. It’s as atmospheric as all get-out, especially as it is all lit by that moody Mal lighting, which makes everyone look fantastic.
The Visitors’ Room (lounge) takes the baroque drama up several notches. Once the Prison Chapel, it’s now entirely black – dark wooden floors, black walls, high black church-esque ceiling. Pods of low seating (more velvet) lie in dim pools of light; enormously oversized fringed lamps hang from the ceiling. There is even a black pool table. It’s the kind of room in which a burlesque devil could appear in a puff of smoke (though he’d have to be a pretty stylish feller).
With 96 rooms and 34 tables in the brasserie, this is fairly sizeable hotel to run. Staff are young, sweet and willing, and once the hotel sorts its minor housekeeping issues out (we visited on the opening weekend) then this Malmaison will claim its place as top choice in Oxford.
The rooms
In this complex building, rooms are spread across five sections: A-Wing, C-Wing, New Road, the House of Correction and the Governors House. A-Wing and C-Wing have cell-style rooms; the House of Correction and the Governor’s House are in a rather more conventional Malmaison style.
Already, A-Wing is winning most fans: this is the section that’s most recognisably a cell block. Actually, it’s more half-prison, half-cathedral, with multiple floors linked by metal gangways and two vast arched windows at either end. Each room in this section takes up what was formerly three cells – the thought that each roomspace would have housed up to nine prisoners, and the prison only closed in 1996, is faintly disturbing.
Designers have retained or restored many original features. Walls are two-and-a-half feet thick, there are iron bars on windows and some rooms have the original iron cell doors, complete with dents from former prisoners banging on them. Happily, prison similarities end there. There are comfy Malmaison beds, luscious fabrics and heavy, sink-into pillows. Bathrooms are gorgeous: either a walk-in shower with an elephantine showerhead or, in some rooms, both shower and freestanding tub-style baths. Technology is tip-top throughout.
For a real blow-out, though, book the split-level suite in the Governor’s House. There’s a sitting room on a mezzanine level, complete with cherry-red freestanding bathtub. The bedroom’s miles below the mezzanine and from down there, the ceilings seem dizzyingly high. You have to close the top curtains with a pulley arrangement. The Mal colours fly high here – dark wood, chocolate suede, a delicious profusion of striped silk cushions, soft woollen throws, chic arrangements of lilies. There’s more of that moody Mal lighting, too, which makes for a very romantic atmosphere. Though should you become overheated, simply stepping into the vast and unheated(!) stone bathroom should cool things down very fast.
Best of all, though, is the suite’s private screening room. This comes complete with overhead projector and Dolby surround sound. (In fact, the suite has about eight square metres of viewing space in it - the big screen, a flatscreen tv upstairs and another giant flatscreen tv in the bedroom.) Dim the lights, hop onto the couch, wrap up in a throw. Comfortable? You won’t want to leave.
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