Louise & Carol pleased with first year at Tower House

Posted by admin on 26/1/10 • Categorised as News, No. 51 Sep 2007

Tower House 1066

One of Bohemia’s little treasures revealed some of its secrets to the Voice last month. This privately owned Victorian guest house in Tower Road West has been owned and run, with a small staff of part-timers (aged from 16 to 76!) by Louise and Carol (‘we only use first names’) for just one year. What strikes a visitor immediately on entry is the wonderful relaxed atmosphere and the hundreds of small touches which give the whole place such character. Louise and partner Carol took over in September 2006 – neither with any experience of the hotel business. Louise had been in stage lighting for 20 years and Carol is a qualified complementary therapist in Diet Nutrition. The ten-bedroom hotel has an ‘Honesty Bar’ where guests can help themselves, making a note of what they drink on a pad!
Carol (‘I feel very protective towards my girls – but I am strict – they call me the wolf and the grandmother’) does the cooking and is very proud of the vegetable garden, tended by herself, Fred and Pat: tomatoes (picked daily), spinach, potatoes, runner beans, sweetcorn, courgettes, squashes, cucumbers, peppers, aubergines, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, tayberries, and blackberries. Free-range eggs come from Catsfield.
‘From next year,’ says Louise, we can’t be called a hotel, so we’ll be known as ‘guest accommodation’, hence our new name ‘Tower House 1066’.