The £25m, top-to-toe transformation of The Principal Edinburgh Charlotte Square, formerly The Roxburghe Hotel. The new hotel joined the PRINCIPAL family of stand-out, city-centre hotels, each with its own unique treatment and personality, entirely appropriate to its historic building envelope and location. Other hotels in the collection include Principal Edinburgh George Street and Principal York (recently voted ‘Hotel Interior of the Year’ at the LateRoom.com awards, as well as ‘Hotel of the Year’ for the second-year-running at the Visit York Awards). Both hotels were also designed by Goddard Littlefair.
The remit for Grade II*-listed The Principal Edinburgh Charlotte Square covered a complete revamp of all the hotel’s public spaces, including the reception, lounge areas, ballroom and meeting rooms, plus the stunning central and multi-award-winning ‘The Garden’ all-day dining area. All of the hotel’s 181 rooms and 18 suites, plus linking lobbies and corridors, were also completely redesigned.
The final element of the scheme was the creation of an exciting new bar and restaurant offer - BABA, a new destination hotspot for Edinburgh, masterminded by the culinary team behind hit Glasgow restaurant Ox and Finch and featuring a Levantine-inspired design feel and menu.
Goddard Littlefair Director and Co-founder Jo Littlefair commented on the overall design approach: ‘Like a cosmopolitan clubhouse, the scheme for The Principal Edinburgh Charlotte Square is eclectic, intriguing and full of references to travel, from set-dressing with vintage suitcases, hats and canes to The Map Room, where the walls are lined with historic maps from around the world. The interior feel is plush and elegant, with interesting and varied furniture and tactile, high-quality fabrics, such as richly-coloured velvets and leathers, all set within a series of stand-out individual spaces.’
History of the Hotel:
The property had long been a hotel, previously trading as The Roxburghe and, before that, as Crowne Plaza Edinburgh. It is made up of seven classic Georgian townhouses, originally designed by leading 18th-century architect Robert Adam. Townhouse ‘front doors’ still form part of the hotel’s façade, which fronts onto both George Street and Charlotte Square in central Edinburgh. Much of the building’s fabric is listed, aside from a relatively modern bedroom wing extension, which was built to increase the hotel’s capacity in the 1990s.
The hotel stayed open for trading throughout this current refurbishment, which was completed in phases, with the first set of bedrooms completed in 2016 and the new public areas in stages across late summer and autumn 2017. The listed, heritage aspects of the project were handled by architects 3DReid, with whom Goddard Littlefair has collaborated on all previous PRINCIPAL projects.
