The Artist Residence currently has 3 hotels in the UK; London, Penzance, Brighton, with the latter once appearing on channel 5’s The Hotel Inspector. Our visit on this occasion being there one in Cornwall.
It’s come a long way since those days. Originally a different local artist would design each room, resulting in an eclectic and rather odd place to stay. You wouldn’t know of that past now though.
We are greeted in the bar area by a young and enthusiastic team. Our room isn’t quite ready so we explore Penzance a little more. It’s out of season, so closed, but the recently restored sea front lido is a beautiful thing. We drive to the nearby Minack Theatre which is quite a spectacle to say the least. And we head to Lands’ End, which might be a tourist hot spot but it’s definitely worth seeing.
Back at AR, we’re shown to a recently refurbished bedroom. It’s very Soho House, which is fine by me. There’s a Nespresso coffee machine. And a Robertson radio. There’s a roll top bath in the room with Bamford products galore. The bed is soft and the bedding luxurious.
The bathroom is small but beautifully designed (even the tiles are very Soho House) with a huge wooden door which opens sideaways. The shower is far bigger than expected. Again, the Bamford is plentiful.
Breakfast, which you pay for separately, is served in their adjoining restaurant, The Cornish Barn (read about dinner here). The mini full english (£8) is a good gauge of the kitchen’s talent for sourcing local ingredients and their ability to cook them perfectly. THAT sausage, you might say. Smoked salmon and scrambled eggs (£8) is another winner. They even have avocado on toast. It’s like London in Cornwall!
From the outside, The Artist Residence looks like a modest old boozer but inside it’s a real looker. With this and Chapel House, another amazing place to stay, just 100 yards from each other, Chapel Street has it covered for places to stay in Penzance.
Would we stay again? Yes.
Artisitresidencecornwall.co.uk
We stayed as guests of the Artist Residence