Historic Norwich hotel reveals refurbishment ahead of reopening date

One of Norfolk’s oldest hotels has described the refurbishment work that has been carried out during lockdown.

In the latest of the Norfolk Talks series, Georgina Postlethwaite, sales and marketing manager at the Maid’s Head in Tombland, Norwich, has described how the team at the hotel has prepared the space to be able to allow social distancing when it reopens on July 4.

She said: “The hotel has been looking after guests for nearly 800 years, and we believe the coronavirus lockdown is the first time in the hotel’s history that it has been closed since it began trading as The Murtel Fish in the 13th century.

“It’s given us an opportunity to completely refurbish and redecorate the public areas, which is something we don’t really have much chance to do when we’re full of lovely guests.

“We’ve also been working on a project which was already in the plan as part of the big refurbishment of the hotel, to refurbish the Yard Bar. This is the historic Yard Bar in the hotel which has been used predominantly in the part for events, but now we’re going to be using it as our new Maid’s Head bar so we can provide the social distancing measures that we know we will have to put in place once we reopen the doors.

“It’s an exciting project and will probably be the legacy of our lockdown.”