Prison Rooms: Just £150 per Night
1.
In the Visitor’s Room of a prison in Oxford, at the table next to me, a middle-aged man in a turquoise shirt sips a cocktail through a straw; his face scrunches up with pleasure. The woman he is with leans in to whisper in his ear. He opens his eyes and catches me looking at him and I look down at the menu I’m holding. Three courses on Christmas Day will be £85.
This building was used to incarcerate and sometimes execute people until it was sold by the council in 1996 for £9,000 to Malmaison, a hotel chain. Today it is worth around £30 million.
For the last 10 years the Visitor’s Room has been a bar area where couples like the one next to me come to enjoy themselves. I look across again and they are kissing. She strokes his belly with the backs of her fingers.
The Malmaison Oxford embraces the history of the building; incarceration is the brand image. Cell walls have been knocked down to make larger rooms, though the original cell door has been kept in some instances. In the lobby a screen plays films and TV shows set in prison. The shelves are ornamented with the metal trays that inmates ate their meals from—and still eat their meals from in still existing prisons. It’s like visiting the London Dungeon,
