Boswells, Oxford’s 280-year-old department store, is reborn as a hotel

What’s the buzz? In a city centre as historic and compact as Oxford’s, new hotels of note typically have to wait for an old building to become vacant. The Malmaison group put rooms in an old prison. There’s the Old Bank Hotel in, you guessed it, an old bank, and the Old Parsonage. And now there’s The Store, which opened in May at one of Oxford’s most famous addresses.

Boswells of Oxford was one of England’s oldest department stores, plying wares including luggage and toys since 1738. Passed between just two families — the Boswells and then the Pearsons — it traded for almost three centuries until announcing its closure in 2019 and shutting its doors during the first pandemic lockdown in April 2020.

Reef Group, a London-based developer, swooped to buy the site and partnered with EQ, a big hospitality group that scored a hit last year with Hôtel des Grands Voyageurs in Paris. Sometimes ambivalent Oxford locals, lamenting the loss of a shopping institution, have waited for the doors to swing open once more after a major redevelopment. 

Location, location, location The Store sits right at central Oxford’s northern gateway on Broad Street, opposite Balliol College. Landmarks within walking distance include the Ashmolean Museum, the Bodleian Library, and more dreaming spires and college quads than you could shake a mortar board at. The rail station, with its sub-60 minute fast trains to London, is a 12-minute stroll down George Street. Park-and-ride buses stop right opposite the hotel.

Checking in “Boswell & Co” signs still hang on the building’s handsome Rutland sandstone facade, which is all that remains of the old store. Full-height shop windows with tasteful black frames now draw the eye into the marble-topped, ground-floor bar where drinks are priced as much with the after-work and pre-dinner local crowd in mind as big-spending tourists. Treadwell, the restaurant, has its own entrance on Cornmarket Street, which used to lead to the pharmacy (the kitchen pass stands roughly where the old counter once stood).

There’s a small spa and gym in the basement and a rooftop evening terrace bar with a commanding view across a forest of spires. In between, 101 rooms continue the slightly placeless minimalism that pervades the hotel, with matt-black bathroom fixtures, clean oak floors and only sparingly deployed punches of colour to break up a sea of taupes and beiges (think burnt-orange velvet bedsteads). Rooms on the fourth and fifth floors have small roof terraces.

The scheme is effective in creating a calm, unfussy base from which to explore a maximalist riot of history, but I’m relieved to hear from Simon Drake, the general manager, that there are plans to nod more confidently towards the building’s past with more old photos and antique concession signs recovered during the refit. Until then, once you’ve stepped in off the street, the place feels like The Store in name only.

Drake, who briefly ran The Randolph, the grand dame of a tiny high-end Oxford hotel market, before a stint in London, is seeking the broadest possible appeal, from visiting university parents, to London weekenders, wide-eyed American tour groups — and the local drinks-and-dinner crowd.

“It’s about not coming here just because it’s a 50th wedding anniversary or your graduation or your wife’s birthday — it’s about coming here because it’s Tuesday,” he tells me in the bar.  

What to do Explore almost 1,000 years of civic and university history in a city that is perfect for weekend breaks. Take a punt on the Cherwell from Magdalen Bridge (Pimm’s jug optional), next to the Botanic Garden, which is also a must in nice weather. Gawp at Victorian taxidermy and ancient curiosities at the adjoining Pitt Rivers and natural history museums, and get lost in the Covered Market, a jumble of stores and eateries under an 18th century roof that is almost as old as Boswells. Take walking shoes for a stroll about the green expanse of Port Meadow, beside the Thames, or venture further north by road to Blenheim Palace, the magnificent seat of the dukes of Marlborough.

What about the food? Those slightly sceptical locals who used to pop into Boswells for a saucepan or some toys for the grandkids include my mother and her partner Ian, an Oxford native through and through. Their disorientation is palpable as they walk in through the doors for a drink on the roof and dinner downstairs. (“That’s where the suitcases were!”)

After a reasonably priced glass of Viognier and a sunset game of name-that-spire, we descend to Treadwell, which is named after a passage of some disrepute later filled in to make way for the department store. After a complete cycle of gentrification, it’s now a serene restaurant serving “untraditionally British” fare.

My beer-braised lamb belly with harissa yoghurt and pickled fennel is exceptional, and Ian gives the steak and chips the thumbs-up. But my “bangers of mash”, with sausage-shaped potato croquettes on a “mash” of shredded pork with Cajun gravy, arguably represents a twist too far. The desserts are winning, though, and I enjoy ordering the “spotted dick pain perdu” purely for the joy of saying out loud what is presumably a first for any menu. At breakfast the next morning, I was prepared to take against the eggs royale with miso roasted trout but loved it.

The damage Double rooms start from about £280 per night, including breakfast, or from about £400 for rooms with roof terraces.

Simon Usborne was a guest of The Store Oxford (thestoreoxford.com)

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