The opening of the Hotel du Vin and bistro in Lewin’s Mead signalled the end of many years of dereliction for an historic sugar warehouse.

Tim Davey and Gerry Brooke take a look back.

It’s been ten very successful years since the first guests checked in and diners sat downto a meal - and next month this simple but stylish city hotel is planning a special anniversary celebration.

This boutique hotel chain - and its architects - succeeded brilliantly in transforming a much blighted corner of the city into a very popular venue complete with cobbled courtyard, original stonework, wooden beams and 40 unique loft style bedrooms.

“We sensitively restored something which meant something to local people,” says Steve Lewis, the hotel chain’s regional manager.

He believes that is why the Bristol Hotel Du Vin has quickly established itself as such a firm favourite in the city.

Part of it is also down to doing “the simple stuff really well.”

And another element is because, as he explains, when it opened there was no other luxury hotel offering fine food accessible without elitism.

“You could have a £15.00 bottle of wine and a fillet steak or a £1,500 bottle of wine and a fillet steak and be treated just the same” he says.

There’s certainly a lesson to be learned here for all those budding town planners and architects who want to make a name for themselves.

In this once industrial building raw sugar, imported into Bristol docks from the West Indies, was refined and made into sugar loaves for well off households.

Steam power was later used in the process and what is now the hotel reception area was once the boiler room.

And the hotel’s wine cellar was once the engine house complete with chimney.

After the sugar house closed down in 1831 the building was used as a tobacco store.

It’s fitting that the hotel now has one of the best collections of cigars in the South West kept in their own special humidor.

Visitors, though, may be surprised to hear that, for over fifty years, the building was also home to a bird food factory.

It was Fred Capern, a Weston-super-Mare chemist with an interest in ornithology, who pioneered the manufacture of clean bird seed for domestic pets.

His Stokes Croft factory moved to the old sugar warehouse in 1896 and stayed there until 1956 when it relocated to the North Somerset village of Yatton.

It was Capern’s management who, in 1922, added the ornate hood to the doorway (it’s still there today) so giving the plain warehouse frontage a gentrified, Georgian look.

For many hundreds of years Lewin’s Mead - it’s named after a Saxon thane - fronted a muddy but tidal River Frome.

There was once a series of small bridges here - they are mentioned in many old stories - which took you from the walled city gate of St John’s to the bottom of Christmas Steps.

Although very polluted by industry, plus the contents of private privies, the river was a popular spot for bathing until covered over in the 1850s.

Throughout Georgian times the Lewin’s Mead area remained fashionable both with merchants and members of the Corporation.

Then, in mid-Victorian times, it went downhill to become the haunt of down-and-outs and street urchins.

By the turn of the 20th century, however, it had become an industrial area noted for its engineering works, printers, a brewery, a dry salter and a timber merchant.

Then, in the 1960s and 70s, Lewin’s Mead finally lost all its character with the building of a major new road and some featureless concrete offices.

But the 1980s refurbishment of the Georgian Unitarian Chapel, next door to the Hotel du Vin, as offices, signalled a much heralded revival.

The nearby St Bartholomew’s Hospital building, which once housed a boy’s school, was also sympathetically restored.

The opening of the Hotel du Vin plus some generous tree and scrub planting by the council has completed the picture.

“Occupancy rates have stayed high despite the recession” says Lorraine Jarvie, the hotel’s general manager.

“All our hotels are in historic buildings of one kind or another which have been sympathetically converted” she adds

“And guests know that Bristol’s Hotel du Vin will deliver that special ambience.”

The hotel du Vin celebrates its 10th anniversary with a ticket only party on Sunday, November 15, at 7pm.

The black tie event will feature a Variety Club auction hosted by Justin Lee Collins.

Tickets cost £65 including food and drink.

Contact the hotel on: events.bristol@hotelduvin.com or: 0117 925 557