Suffolk Magazine reviews The Swan

Tessa Allingham reviews The Swan in the February 2018 edition of Suffolk Magazine:

“I’m in Room 15 at The Swan Hotel, Southwold, surrounded fashionably in Down Pipe. Its own makers- Farrow and Ball, natch – call the shade of leaden grey-blue ‘daringly dark’ and it is that, but in a cocooning, cosy way, especially now as evening succumbs to night and the glow from the demijohn glass lamps either side of the vast bed spreads an orange warmth around the space.

It’s a beautifully comfortable room on the top floor. On this unseasonably warm evening I’ve pushed down the sash windows that overlook the High Street – I can see past Mills & Son butchers towards the murky lapping of the North Sea at Gun Hill – and I catch snatches of conversation from below.

a child’s voice rings above lower adult tones. He’s wearied by his day. “Why is everything Adnams round here?” he sighs. “Well, you see Adnams is…” replies a parent – I assume – before a car muffles the rest of the response, and the pair move out of earshot.

I imagine the reply that perhaps ensues, a potted history of Adnams’ association with Southwold that would have explained how brothers George and Ernest Adnams bought Southwold’s Sole Bay Brewery in 1872, how George didn’t take to Suffolk and left for South Africa where he was – they say – eaten by a crocodile, how his brother built the business (with later support from the Loftus family) into one that would win awards, survive the catastrophic floods of 1953, open kitchenware shops and shops to sell wine and beer, and support local charities.”

Read the full article in the February 2018 edition of Suffolk Magazine.