Meet the only resident of what was once Bristol’s grandest hotel

Tom Peter walks up a grand staircase to get to his bedroom in the Grosvenor Hotel. In years gone by, he would have been staying in one of Bristol’s most prestigious hotels. Today, he has to watch his step as a few on this staircase are missing.

Using a torch to navigate his way along corridors with precarious floors and a few non-existent ceilings, he reaches his room with a picture postcard view of St Mary Redcliffe Church.

He returns to the ground floor level where he has created a living room with a sofa, a table and a few chairs. He has cleared some of the junk off the floor and painted a few of the walls.

Tom’s living room on the ground floor of the former Grosvenor Hotel

Inside the Grosvenor Hotel, which was built in 1875

Looking up through one of the ceilings

“This is a wonderful building, there’s loads to it that I really enjoy,” Tom says. “And to have a safe space inside…

“I had found a key card down an alleyway and it just happened that when I used it on the swipe, the door opened. But the door was already open. I thought it was to do with the key card but it really wasn’t.

“I’m gradually, slowly tidying up each room one at a time. My initial thought that was perhaps we could house Ukrainians here, maybe this hotel could be an answer to some short-term problems.”

Tom’s bedroom is a room with a view

An upstairs corridor within the labyrinthine building

Going up

The long saga of the notorious eyesore near Temple Meads reached a new chapter this week with a report updating Bristol City Council plans to use a Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) to acquire the former Grosvenor Hotel in order to redevelop the land on which it is located.

A ‘decision pathway’ submitted to cabinet includes plans for a Joint Development & Land Agreement (JDLA) for the development of the Temple Square site (including another former hotel, the George & Railway) and the purchase of Station Approach, as well as the proposed acquisition of land at Temple Square including the former Grosvenor Hotel.

Faded railwayside glamour on the side of the former hotel

Walls are not all still in place

En suites come as standard in most rooms

The proposed CPO of the Grosvenor is part of a scheme expected to cost between £16.67m and £19.67m promised to deliver “significant city benefits… as an outcome of the long term economic growth driven by the George and Railway project alongside the wider regeneration achieved through a joint development and land agreement”.

A decision on the future of the land and the buildings sitting on it – once bisected by a famous flyover – will be taken by Bristol’s cabinet.

Bristol City Council senior development surveyor, Jan Reichel, said in her report: “The development will have the potential to achieve high sustainability outcomes, based on design proposals and the excellent accessibility of the developments at the heart of the Temple Quarter and near to Temple Meads Station.”

Tom heading upstairs

The view from one of the top floor rooms

Most of the windows have been boarded up

For 30-year-old Tom, however, the Grosvenor Hotel is not just a name on a report or a building to be acquired by a variety of acronyms. It is his home.

Tom grew up in Hertfordshire and has lived in Bristol for six weeks, struggling to find any official support after leaving rehab.

Tom says that he often thinks “about the transition between the people on the outside of the building going about their day to day, trying to race for something, and I’m sat here with infinite time, trying to collect myself in my own bits of meditation, but at the same time feeling like I can keep myself busy as there’s a lot to do”.

Evidence of former uses of the building is everywhere

Tom is slowly trying to tidy the rooms but it is a big job for one person

Some of the stairs are safer than others

Tom returns downstairs to his living room where he has just made himself some porridge on a small camping stove that he found on top of a phone box. He is also trying to grow some of his own food from seeds.

“You can tell this place used to be the real crème de la crème. Some of the wood, the dark mahogany wood, the wallpaper, the ornateness around the high ceilings, the detailed work. There is so much heritage here.

“The people who have come through this place are amazing.”

Tom could be the last ever resident of the Grosvenor Hotel

Bristol City Council want to buy land at Temple Square including the former Grosvenor Hotel “to support the wider redevelopment and regeneration of the Temple Quarter area”

All photos: Martin Booth

Read more: 18 historic photos of Bristol hotels 

Listen to the latest Bristol24/7 Behind the Headlines podcast: