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The Northgate: is this Suffolk's most stylish boutique hotel?

Watching hotels reinvent themselves over time has been an enduring fascination of my job. Take this place. Simon and Jenny Potts ran it – then called Ounce House – with hands-on dedication as a five-star guesthouse from the early Eighties until they retired and sold it last year. They brought up their family in part of the huge Victorian red-brick house, with garden behind.

People such as the Potts formed the backbone of British hotels back then: more often than not “amateurs” who offered nothing more than gracious comfort in a homely atmosphere. Now a new breed – let’s call it the hedge fund hotelier – is taking on many of our formerly private addresses.

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Ounce House is one example, just reopened as The Northgate. It’s part of the Chestnut Group, a burgeoning hospitality company created in 2012 by Philip Turner, a former corporate financier turned hotelier. This is Chestnut’s fourth East Anglian property in as many years and Turner intends to add up to six more by 2019.

Armed with this information, I entered Ounce House in some trepidation. “Brace yourself,” I thought as I stood in the newly cool entrance hall, “for the brave new world.”

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Well, not entirely new. “I’ve been here before,” I told the receptionist Genevieve, “when it was called Ounce House and run by the Potts.”

“Me, too,” she replied. “They are my parents.”

Continuity, you can’t beat it. The now-retired Potts are, it turns out, delighted by the new incarnation of Ounce House and Genevieve is equally delighted to be part of an exciting new venture (she and her colleague, Rebecca, act as receptionists/hosts). And why not? It doesn’t take long to detect a palpable sense of energy here and a strong feeling that just-opened Northgate is a hit.

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It’s certainly not a guesthouse anymore. With its spacious, moody and amatory cocktail bar (with a team of six barmen), arrestingly decorated dining room, elegant chef’s table in the kitchen and nine glamorous bedrooms, The Northgate is hard to categorise, which is exactly Philip Turner’s intention. He wants to avoid the standard classifications of pub, hotel, restaurant or guesthouse, but be “simply eponymous with a great experience”.

Even if, for me, it’s all a bit instant and metropolitan, there’s no doubt that the experience is, if not great, damn good. The young sneaker-wearing staff, overseen by general manager Garth Wray, are enthusiastic and professional; the food, from highly experienced chef Daniel Grigg, is a cut above; and the rates are fair.

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My pearly room, Duncombe, was large and luxurious, with steps down to an attractive bathroom with blue-grey tiles on the walls, a rainforest shower and deep bathtub. Amanda, Philip’s wife, is responsible for the decoration, which is probably why it errs on the right side (just) of looking too slick and stylised. For dinner I ate a fine cauliflower risotto and for breakfast pink grapefruit with orange and thyme granita amid a buzzy vibe that had not dissipated since the night before.

As long as it doesn’t put growth before maintaining standards, I reckon the Chestnut Group is an impressive example of the new breed. 

Read the full review: The Northgate Hotel

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Northgate Street, Bury St Edmunds IP33 1HP (01284 339604; thenorthgate.com). Doubles from £120 per night, including breakfast. Not suitable for guests using wheelchairs.