Harwich - The Fryatt Hotel

 

Harwich - The Fryatt Hotel & Bar

65, Garland Road, Parkeston, Harwich, Essex CO12 4PA

I’ve probably been to Parkeston more times than I’ve been anywhere on a leisure trip. This may seem strange, but my grandparents lived there, and I still visit the area to tend graves there and at Wix, a few miles away. I’ve known the village since the sixties, the ups and the downs, and I remember the Fryatt Hotel when it was The Garland Hotel, and the local welfare park was a bit farther along the road, with swings and slides to entertain under-twelves like me.

Much of Parkeston was built by the railway company, including some housing and community buildings; those parts farther from the railway, including Garland Road, were built by private developers. But that was almost 140 years ago, and I’m afraid the area hasn’t entirely aged well. Other parts of Harwich - around the old town, or Dovercourt, near the beach - might be attractive to tourists; Parkeston isn’t, it's an industrial area really, with a few residential streets laid out in the days when workers had to live close to their work. With a Premier Store over the road, the Fryatt Hotel is ideally situated for contractors, and it is no doubt that that market brings in much of its business, with there being a perennial need for contract workers around the port, much of which is only half a mile away.

First impressions of the Fryatt Hotel aren’t what they should be; piles of cigarette ends litter the street outside the entrance door. I’m not against pub goers having a cigarette, but a wall-mounted ashtray could be provided, and emptied by the cleaners, and patrons ‘encouraged’ to use it with appropriate words from behind the bar.

There’s no reception as such, just the bar, a somewhat spartan, public bar at that. There is a small snug to one side, but the overriding atmosphere is not one of peace and relaxation.

We stayed in a ground floor room to the back of the building, in what was once the ‘Hamilton Room’ (named after the one time Chairman of the Great Eastern Railway). In quite recent times this area was a restaurant, indeed an Indian restaurant, and a damn good one at that. It's not so well suited to accommodation, having few windows, and not being terribly warm. Heating in our room was provided by an electric radiator, and an electric towel rail in the ensuite; there was a lobby between our room and the ensuite which was unheated, which, at the time of year we stayed, did cause something of a shock when venturing between room and ensuite and being not fully dressed.

There was a bath in the ensuite, with a reasonable shower over, but no grab rail to hold on to when getting in or out. Towels were supplied but not refreshed in our stay - in fact the room was not serviced at all in the three nights we were there, a mountain of rubbish accumulating around our bin for the cleaner to deal with after we checked out. The ensuite was a decent size, but the room itself seemed to have been built down to size, to fit a dressing table/desk, double bed, and bedside cabinets; our suitcase fitted in the cold lobby by the ensuite, but we only had a small bag with us. Travellers with bulky luggage would have not had enough space.

There was no wardrobe in our room, just a hanging rail in that cold lobby between room and ensuite, and no full length mirror; nor was there anything like a dressing table in the bedroom. It was a good job neither of us wanted to do make-up or similar. In fact even if we had had a mirror it wouldn’t have been much use because the lighting in the room was dreadful, I was tempted to buy a stronger light bulb because the one fitted in the room would, in the old days, have been rated no more than about 40 watts.

Breakfast was in the bar area, a self-service buffet of cereals, juice, tea or coffee, yoghurt, fruit, toast and preserves, and croissants. There was no hot option; Morrisons supermarket, ten minutes walk away, does have a cafe if a good breakfast is important, but for the price we paid, around £175 for three nights, a continental was more than adequate.

Being honest, if I were to looking for somewhere to stay around Harwich, the Fryatt would not be top of my list; even nearby there is a Premier Inn, and a planning application has been submitted for a sixty bed Travelodge close by too, and both might be preferred to the Fryatt even if they were a little more expensive; indeed, when that Travelodge opens, I think the Fryatt may struggle to fill all of its rooms. Perhaps they should turn that ground floor area back into a restaurant.