Duchess Daisy's Royal Hunting lodge
Occasionally a traveller may stumble across an interesting or unusual hotel. In these days of web bookings this becomes increasingly unlikely as the chains dominate the process, and potential guests increasingly want to see a room or check out the offer before they book, removing the element of the unexpected. Over 50% of all hotel rooms are now booked via the web so the chances of an independent hotel being found are decreasing unless they are featured in a marketing scheme or read about in a style magazine
At HotelDesigns we pride ourselves on looking at all different types of hotels, from bed and breakfast establishments up to some of the best hotels in the world. We also try to look at hotels across the world as part of a global industry – an approach that can be limited by our equal desire to experience the culture the hotel is in, hence our rambling drives around Europe and elsewhere. On these drives we target particular locations and look for hotels to Review but sometimes the distances driven every day are enough that an intermediate stop, where no review is planned, may intervene. It was on one of these stops that we discovered the Hunting Lodge at Promnice.
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The reception 'lobby' is the heart of the hotel. In hunting days it would have been the centre of social events, and with a heavy curtain that can be drawn across the entrance door and large fireplaces it probably still is in the snows of winter, when guests may go for sleigh rides on forest tracks
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The exterior doesn't hint at the riot of Victoriana on the inside, apart from the stags head on the end gable
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The eyes are like the eyes in a portrait, they follow you everywhere. Scene at the top of the staircase is a little staggering, but the bedrooms are not too deer....
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Spiral staircase links the lobby with the bedroom floor. Another smaller stair rises to the third floor and falls to the sauna below
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We didn’t stumble across this remarkable piece of history in an hotel. It is impossible to stumble across it, hidden as it is in the hunting forest of Pszczyna. My partner found it whilst researching Polish hotels and the idea of maybe driving on forest tracks well off the main roads was enough to get my vote for it as a night stop.
The hotel was first a surprise, then a delight, and then a mystery. Its own publicity material refers to it as a Lodge, then as a Hunting Manor and again as a Residence. It was built in 1868 in what is described as the “English Neo-Gothic Style with noticeable German traces”. The owner, Herzog von Pless, was a member of the Court of Wilhelm 1st in Berlin, and held the title of ‘Master of the Emperor’s Hunt in the Empire’. Situated next to Lake Paprocany the lodge quickly became a favourite hunting haunt of European royalty and the game was enhanced by the gift of Tsar Aleksander 2nd of two breeding pairs of European Bison.
The first surprise was that it was decorated in a high Victorian style. This apparently dated from its decoration by ‘Duchess Daisy’ of the Welsh Cornwallis family who married into the Pless family. Perhaps because of its position in the westerly part of Poland but behind the ‘iron curtain’ the decoration has survived and the now Hotel Noma Residence is a part of the Polish Prestige Hotels network.
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