Boutique hotel is planned at heart of famous village

Nov 9 2007 by Liam Murphy, Liverpool Daily Post

APPROVAL could be given later this month to ambitious plans to convert the dilapidated former hospital in the historic village of Port Sunlight into a boutique hotel.

Craig and Lisa Baker, the owners of the award-winning Hillbark Hotel, in Frankby, are behind the scheme to transform the building, which has been vandalised since it went out of use.

Local architect Mike Paddock said the couple had already started some renovations of the building, including repairing the roof and windows to make it watertight and secure.

“It was dilapidated,” he said. “Even the Trust, which deals with the village, was concerned if any more vandalism happened to it the building would be lost.”

Consultations had taken place with local residents which had proven positive, he added.

Wirral council’s planning department had sent out letters to those living nearby and received just two objections on the basis that work had already begun on the building.

The application, which is due to be considered by the planning committee on November 15, is for change of use of the building to a hotel, extensions, and two new buildings.

Sunlight Lodge, as it is known, was designed by famed Liverpool Architects Grayson & Ould, and originally built as a cottage hospital in 1907, containing 12 beds and two cots.

It was one of the earliest forms of occupational health and provided the residents/workers of the village with free health service and continued until the introduction of the National Health services in 1948.

The building was converted into a training centre for the employees of Unilever in 1950, closing in 1984 and then converted into an elderly people’s home which eventually closed, leaving the building derelict for the past six or seven years.

After it became vacant, it was allowed to become derelict, although the site itself still retains all of its original features, and its extensive mature gardens.

The aim is to completely renovate the building with the two new two-storey structures added to either side.

One will house bedroom accommodation, a fitness suite and a swimming pool while the other will offer garages and a staff area.

The work will be carried out in two phases, with the refurbishment of the original building to create function facilities being the priority, followed by the new 15-bedroom hotel section.

The report to the planning committee said: “The design has tried to pick up the themes of vernacular architecture in the village, but by the use of zinc to give the designs a contemporary twist which will indicate in future the time of their construction.”

Frankby’s Hillbark Hotel is housed in a Grade II-listed building set in 250 acres of parkland and shares a common theme with Port Sunlight – it was designed as a home for soap magnate Robert William Hudson.

liammurphy