Infact the simple colour palettes and eccentric design accents, which add a modern vintage flair to the room ambience pervade all the hotel areas, whether you are sampling the locally renowned ‘Afternoon Tea’ in the Canvas Room or the laissez faire style menu in The Gainsborough Brasserie, the hotel’s main dining space. The seamless richly muted tones and room symmetry is down to the eye of award-winning New York based design studio, Champalimaud Design, who have modernised heritage spaces such as The Plaza New York and Hotel Bel Air, Los Angeles amongst creating the interiors for other famed hotel hot spots. Whilst The Gainsborough Bath Spa doesn’t rest on its laurels and continues to amend and evolve with a changing landscape, the soul of the hotel unarguably lies in the spa village, a lantern lit maze of holistic treatment rooms and the much lauded ‘ancient roman thermal baths,’ created on the lower ground floor. Sitting under a glass atrium, multiple columns are laid out around different sized thermal pools at varying heated temperatures; the area has purposely been recreated in the style of the ancient roman baths (which sat on the site) and reimagines the ‘Bath House Circuit,’ a daily ritual of social bathing the Roman people swore by to cure the wounded. Given a contemporary reimagining by the spa specialists, guests are given the chance to do a 30-minute tired muscle and nerve soothing ritual, oscillating between high temperatures in the Warm Balneo Pool, cool lymphatic hosing, followed by an Infrared sauna, ice alcove and final float. By the end, it is easy to imagine how daily discipline of this practice could have strengthened immunity, muscle flex and healed skin amongst these ancient Roman communities. You can also choose from a range of luxury holistic and aromatherapy based treatments – such as a magnesium wrap using hot stones, minerals and massage - utilising the thermal waters too, conducted in rooms above the thermal pool, which originally were part of the United Hospital built in the 1820’s. Beyond the serene atmosphere, nod to it’s heritage and chic demeanour, it’s the small personal touches which stand the 5*star hotel apart: the lunch/dinner menu was re-worked to be more casual, brasserie style after Covid shifted guest’s requirements, champagne and strawberries in the fridge on arrival, and on return to my room after dinner I found a sampling of Elemis skincare sleep products and a pillow note with Shakespeare’s Sonnet LXI.
The Gainsborough Bath Spa is a study in how to elevate historical features and ancient tales through tasteful modernist storytelling.
thegainsboroughbathspa.co.uk
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