In the public areas, despite clever space planning by the designers, the constraints of the original building have resulted in some compromises, which commence within the Reception. Here the dark stone floor has been retained, and set against antique furniture and pale walls provides an introduction that is slightly unsatisfactory. The location of the entrance doors in the corner of the building works well externally in relation to sight lines on approaching the building, indeed I may have driven around the cobbled one way streets for days without finding it had the entrance not been so strategically placed. But the position does not work so well internally, leaving reception desk, corridor, stairways and lift doors all in a long row across the rear of reception. Strangely the device of the inset marble in the bathrooms could perhaps have been used in this floor to help provide the sense of place and style achieved elsewhere in the hotel.