Hello (again) Rye
The George in Rye reopened May 18th 2022, following a two-year restoration project to repair the damage caused by the devastating fire, where thankfully no one was hurt.
The following interview took place a few weeks before Katie Clarke and her husband Alex’s relaunch of The George in Rye.
Katie and Alex on the doorstep of The George in Rye.
Tell us about your background and how you became hoteliers.
Katie. Alex and I met on our first day at university in Edinburgh. Early on, Alex said to me, “I want to have a hotel,” and I was always like, yeah, yeah.
After uni, we worked in India for a while. When we came back to the UK, I wanted to train to be a buyer for Habitat but ended up on the shop floor for nearly a year. Turns out I’m really good at selling!
After that, I moved into the film industry and worked for about nine years as a buyer decorating film sets. Meanwhile, Alex was working his way through different departments in various hotels around London.
The last film I worked on was Nanny McPhee, sourcing the props, all while heavily pregnant with our second daughter. Five weeks after our daughter Olive was born Alex said, “I’ve been down to Rye to see a hotel”. I had other priorities at the time, I had two children under two, and I was working on these massive film projects. Still, we came down to look at The George and put an offer in that afternoon. Within ten days, we had to put our house in London on the market to help to pay for it. And within five weeks, we’d relocated to Rye and were living in a rental. I suppose that’s when we first became ‘hoteliers’.
What were your first impressions of Rye and The George?
The night we moved it was Rye bonfire night 2004. Having only visited Rye a few times before, we opened the door to see crowds of people dressed up walking the streets with flaming torches. The kids were tiny, but we took them out in the pram, got fish and chips and were like, “what is going on?” Then the next day was the Rye classic car rally. That was our baptism of fire. We got the keys to The George, did 90 covers for lunch, and it’s been full-on ever since.
We had an au pair join us to help look after the girls, and I sat behind a reception desk like Sybil Fawlty while Alex ran the restaurant.
When did you realise the potential of The George?
When we initially looked around The George, they said, “Oh, there’s this room at the very end of the tour.” It was the Ballroom, which they’d only been using for the occasional event, but we could see instantly what an incredible space it was. The whole building was like that, full of potential.
While we waited for planning permission, we started fundraising to be able to do what we wanted to do. My brother also came down, ran our bar, and made it so much fun that it suddenly became a brilliant place to be.
When we got planning in 2005, we closed for a year for our first refurb. We’d travelled a lot and were inspired by places we’d stayed. We wanted to create the kind of place that we wanted to stay at, that was accepting of children; that had delicious food and wine, comfortable sheets, duvets and excellent showers. All those luxury things, but without the luxury price tag. We didn’t want to make The George ridiculously expensive, we wanted it to be community-oriented and inclusive. There was a special local feeling about it which we felt from the very start.
Where does the inspiration come from for the room interiors?
When we renovated The George the first time around, I used my experience gained in the film industry; I went into each room and thought about the story the space was telling. Maria from Retrouvius, (who has collaborated on both renovations) and I started by going around each room together and talking about each space. It isn’t themed, but each room has a different vibe. The new rooms carry this on, but are often based around a found item like a beautiful antique textile or colourful lamp, or in the case of the restaurant a huge sail from a Thames barge.
After the fire was out and the dust had settled, how did you start the process of planning and building a future for The George?
In the beginning, you don’t realise how bad it is; you think we’ll be open in six months. We were all in shock. The people who had been at The George on the night of the fire were traumatised by what happened.
From day one, we had to look after our staff. Initially, we were trying to keep them all on, but obviously, that couldn’t work long term. Luckily a lot of our core staff have returned for the re-opening, all our managers in fact.
Now that you’re about to welcome back customers, what can they look forward to when they visit The George?
We pride ourselves on the element of surprise and delight at The George, so we’ve carried on that theme with lots of carefully sourced treasures, art and antiques. The rooms have been lovingly restored, and there’s a real focus on reuse of materials and sustainable design.
We’ve worked really hard on the flow of the building, and we now have a lift which is great for accessibility. So, as you enter The George, we have
a small sitting room to the left of the reception. Then you walk through to the new Dragon Bar, which we renamed to match our loyalty scheme. We’ve moved the bar back to add a little standing room and be more spacious, but it should have a real buzz about it.
Our refurbed restaurant is beautifully atmospheric with its sailcloth walls and end-grain floor, and there’s a fantastic open kitchen.
Then you walk through to what is now The Parlour Bar, which will serve daytime brunch, afternoon tea and delicious cocktails in the evening.
We’ve been collaborating with Rye Chocolate to create a bar, available in the rooms (see page 20) and with Hunter Jones (RyeZine issue 3), who are doing candles and bespoke rooms scents.
We had to completely rebuild the ceiling in the ballroom because of water damage. There were 4,000 acanthus leaves applied by hand, individually. They took casts of the original frieze to recreate it, and it looks stunning. The team at De Gournay replaced the hand-painted wallpaper with peacocks and pomegranates, which looks amazing.
Since I’ve lived in Rye, I have heard countless times The George is the heart of Rye. Is it customer support that has driven you both?
I know, imagine the pressure!
People were distraught when we had the fire, and we got some amazing, kind letters from people all over the world, which we really appreciated.
The town has been amazingly supportive, putting up with all the building works and disruption and always having a kind word to say when you are hitting a low point. We particularly would like to thank our neighbours on the High Street who have been wonderful throughout.
It’s been more like a “new” opening rather than a “re-opening”, we’ve had to re-imagine every detail and of course re-build the team from scratch which
is an on-going process.
No doubt we’ll be ironing out a few issues for a while yet, but we are working tirelessly to return The George to its previous form with the support of our team and the patience of our customers for which we are truly grateful.
A personal question, I imagine this is not the first time you’ve been asked, do you find it easy to work with a partner?
My parents have very a collaborative relationship. My sister runs a business with her husband, and Alex’s sister runs the restaurant Moro with her husband. So it’s kind of normal for us to be husband and wife teams in our family, which I think probably makes the job and life easier. Plus, we’ve been together for 31 years.
I love it, but it’s still a massive learning curve. There are so many things that you need to be good at, it’s mind-blowing. You need a creative eye. You’ve
got to be really into food, wine, customer service and marketing, so it’s helpful having two people in it together.
By now The George in Rye has reopened, we were there on the opening night and people were checking in, there was an amazing atmosphere. Lots of smiling people enjoying great food and drinks and I can see why so many have missed The George, the heart of Rye.
The George in Rye
98 High Street, Rye TN31 7JT
www.thegeorgeinrye.com
01797 222114 | stay@thegeorgeinrye.com
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