Ten Hill Place is a superb four-star resort within the coronary heart of Edinburgh. However behind its doorways lies an interesting historical past
Ten Hill Place
Ten Hill Place Lodge in Edinburgh is a superb resort. Even when that was all it did, I might advocate it. However it seems it does slightly extra.
The rooms are massive and exceptionally clear. The meals is great, the service is first-rate and there’s the appreciable bonus of designated parking behind the constructing, one thing that turns into significantly helpful when Edinburgh is being overrun by the Fringe.
Additionally it is brilliantly positioned, shut sufficient to the Outdated City and the Royal Mile to make exploring the town straightforward, whereas nonetheless offering someplace to retreat to while you’ve had sufficient of the crowds. However the factor I cherished most about Ten Hill Place was what I hadn’t anticipated to search out there.
Historical past.
It’s not the type of historical past that entails placing just a few outdated images in reception and calling the place historic. Ten Hill Place is deeply related to the Royal Faculty of Surgeons of Edinburgh, whose origins return to 1505. The resort itself is significantly youthful. It opened in November 2006 and now has 129 bedrooms.
So you could have a resort that isn’t but 20 years outdated sitting on a campus belonging to an establishment that’s greater than 5 centuries outdated. That distinction is slightly fantastic.
Throughout our keep, I used to be given a tour of the buildings by the resort’s normal supervisor. And it was then that I started to grasp simply how uncommon this place is. There are grand halls the place surgeons research and prepare, sitting alongside areas getting used for Fringe occasions.
Folks have been coming and going for performances whereas, elsewhere in the identical complicated, medical schooling that has been going down in a single kind or one other for greater than 5 centuries continues. It’s a outstanding combination. And someway, it really works.
Maybe that’s as a result of Edinburgh has all the time been slightly good at placing centuries of historical past alongside fashionable life. Or maybe the Fringe is solely the proper setting for it.
From barber surgeons to Sherlock Holmes
The Royal Faculty of Surgeons of Edinburgh started life because the Incorporation of Surgeons and Barbers of Edinburgh in July 1505. Sure, surgeons and barbers.
The 2 professions have been as soon as joined collectively, which supplies you an thought of fairly how completely different the world of drugs was when the Faculty started.
The Faculty is now the oldest surgical school on the earth and helps surgical coaching, examinations {and professional} growth throughout greater than 140 international locations. And the historical past is not confined to plaques and outdated paperwork.
The Surgeons’ Corridor Museum is true there on the campus. Its collections have been creating for the reason that late seventeenth century and have been open to the general public since 1832. It’s house to one of many largest and most historic pathology collections within the UK. Throughout my tour with the Surgeons Quarter Basic Supervisor, Mark McKenzie, we popped in for a fast look. It’s outstanding and barely ugly.
There may be an anatomy theatre with an interactive dissection desk recreating the primary public dissection held in Scotland in 1702. The museum additionally tells the story of figures together with Joseph Lister and James Younger Simpson, whereas Arthur Conan Doyle’s time on the Faculty is explored via his relationship with surgeon Joseph Bell, the person he credited because the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes.
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After which there’s the darker aspect of medical historical past, together with Burke and Hare, whose crimes concerned supplying our bodies to the medical occupation for dissection. It’s fascinating, often ugly and totally in contrast to the type of factor you count on to find when checking right into a resort.
However then, neither was a lot of what makes Ten Hill Place so particular.
Contained in the resort
The shock is that each one of this might simply grow to be a distraction from the resort itself. It would not. Ten Hill Place is a genuinely glorious place to remain.
Our room was massive, exceptionally clear and very snug. After a day spent strolling round Edinburgh, significantly throughout the Fringe, it was precisely what you need from a resort room: someplace spacious and welcoming to retreat to. Room service was glorious, too. After which there was the restaurant.
We ate there throughout our keep and each the meals and repair have been distinctive at lunch, dinner and breakfast.
The haggis, neeps and tatties with whisky sauce was a selected spotlight, as was the Scottish cheeseboard with plum and apple chutney, quince jelly, grapes and oatcakes. The desserts have been glorious too, specifically the standard Scottish Cranachan with raspberries and honey.
The service deserves specific reward. There’s something reassuring about arriving at a restaurant in the midst of the Fringe and discovering that the employees have not been overwhelmed by the sheer variety of individuals descending on Edinburgh. The whole lot felt relaxed and attentive.
Outdoors, the resort was busy with individuals having fun with meals and drinks beneath an outside cover, including to the ambiance of the sq.. This is not a resort attempting to fake the Fringe is not taking place, as a substitute it embraces it whereas additionally providing a haven away from determined performers dressed as swans attempting handy you a leaflet for his or her one individual present about shopping for a brand new alarm clock.
When you retreat upstairs, you could have a cushty, peaceable room ready for you. The placement is a significant power.
You’re shut sufficient to stroll to the Outdated City and the most important Fringe venues, whereas having a delegated parking house behind the resort, as we did, is a gigantic benefit in case you’re arriving by automobile. Throughout August, that alone makes the place significantly extra engaging.
And you then realise why the resort exists
There may be one other truth about Ten Hill Place which makes the entire expertise satisfying. The resort’s income return into coaching surgeons. This is not some small aspect venture, both.
Surgeons Quarter, which manages the resort and the Faculty’s wider industrial actions, recorded income of £12.7m in 2024 and contributed virtually £3m to the Faculty. Ten Hill Place itself recorded 97 per cent occupancy that yr, promoting greater than 45,000 room nights.
The Faculty describes it as Edinburgh’s largest impartial four-star resort.
So the industrial aspect of the operation is doing precisely what you’ll hope it does: It makes cash. And that cash helps help the work of an establishment whose objective is to coach and develop surgeons.
That offers the resort a way of objective which most venues merely haven’t got. You are not simply paying for a room. You’re staying in a part of a 500-year-old establishment.
The perfect bit is what you do not count on
That, finally, is why I cherished Ten Hill Place. There are many glorious lodges in Edinburgh. What makes this one completely different is that you just get the superb resort after which, virtually as a bonus, a wholly completely different expertise ready behind the door.
You’ll be able to have an impressive dinner, retreat to a big and immaculate room, stroll out into the insanity of the Fringe and, someplace alongside the way in which, end up standing in a grand corridor the place surgeons are skilled. You’ll be able to discover a museum containing centuries of medical historical past. You’ll be able to study that the establishment started with surgeons and barbers in 1505.
And you’ll know that your keep helps help its work at the moment. To not wax too lyrical about it, however lodges are sometimes superb at taking from the communities that encompass them and never essentially all the time good at giving again. Ten Hill Place is a wholly completely different mannequin.
Lodge and surgical school. 5 hundred years of historical past and a contemporary four-star resort. Fringe performers and surgeons. Vacationers and trainees. And someway, slightly splendidly, all of it matches collectively.
I arrived anticipating a wonderful resort. I obtained one. What I hadn’t anticipated was to grow to be fascinated by the place it sits inside.
With Ten Hill Place you get an excellent resort and for a few nights one can find your self a part of one thing a lot larger than one.
Journey Factfile
Rob Williams and his household stayed at Ten Hill Place as a visitor of WorldHotels Distinctive.
Ten Hill Place Lodge, WorldHotels Distinctive is positioned within the coronary heart of Edinburgh at 10 Hill Pl, Edinburgh EH8 9DS.
Charges for the room we stayed in are £109.00 room solely in January, going as much as £399 for a similar traditional room in mid-August.
Haggis, Neeps & Tatties with 1505 Whisky Sauce is priced at £17.00.
Breakfast is served between 7am and 10am and prices £17.50 per individual. Kids as much as ten years outdated eat free.
Tickets for the Surgeons Corridor Museum are priced at £10 for adults and £5.50 for youngsters.