The Chester Grosvenor

About The Chester Grosvenor

The Chester Grosvenor occupies the most prominent site in the city, a long black-and-white frontage on Eastgate Street directly beneath the Jubilee clock and a few steps from the central cross. The building has been an inn or a hotel since the eighteenth century and was rebuilt in its present half-timbered form for the Grosvenor family, whose estate still owns it. It remains the only five-star hotel in Chester and the one address every local recognises.

Bedrooms and suites are traditionally furnished, with heavy fabrics, marble bathrooms and a good deal more space than the exterior suggests. The best rooms look out over Eastgate Street towards the clock, though these are also the ones that hear the most of the city on a Saturday night; the quieter rooms face inwards. Service is old-fashioned in the best sense, with a concierge who knows the city properly and can get you a table or a racecourse badge at short notice.

Eating is split between the Arkle, the hotel's formal restaurant and one of the most serious kitchens in the north-west, and La Brasserie, an all-day room done out in Parisian style that handles breakfast, afternoon tea and lighter dinners. There is a cocktail bar with an extensive whisky list, and a small spa on the lower ground floor with treatment rooms, a sauna, a steam room and a gym.

This suits couples marking an occasion, racegoers who want to walk to the Roodee, and anyone who values position above all else. The cathedral, the Rows and the walls are all within three or four minutes on foot. There is no hotel car park in the usual sense, though valet parking is arranged, and the rates are the highest in the city by a clear margin.