No takers: the former Selsdon Park Hotel, turned into a Birch membership club which collapsed into administration in 2023, is still seeking a buyer
Administrators Moorfields have been granted a further year to try to sell the former Selsdon Park Hotel.
Birch Selsdon closed in November 2023 due to “cash constraints”, barely six months since it had re-opened as a boutique hipster resort charging £150 monthly membership fees, following a £15million makeover, the latest efforts to modernise the 100-year-old hotel.
Previously the De Vere Selsdon Estate, the 181-room hotel had two restaurants, three bars, a gym, tennis court and an outdoor lido.
When the closure happened, the majority of the Birch’s 161 full- and part-time employees were made redundant.
The Selsdon Park estate, 200 acres of parkland together with its Victorian country house, was bought in 1924 by Allan Doble Sanderson for £13,000 – equivalent at today’s values to little more than £1million. Sanderson converted the country house into a hotel with 24 rooms, which opened in 1925. Between 1927 and 1930, the East Wing was built and in 1935 the West Wing was added. The whole building was covered in brick to give it a Neo-Jacobean appearance.
In 1929, the 18-hole golf course was added, laid out by JH Taylor, the five-time Open champion.
Brief lives: the bar and restaurants at Birch Selsdon overlook 200 acres of North Downs parkland. The venue, closed in Nov 2023, had only been open since that April
In the 1960s, under Sanderson’s son, Basil Sanderson, the Selsdon Park garnered the reputation as one of the country’s finest hotels.
It was often used by FA Cup football teams for the night before they played in the Wembley final, and was even the location for filmed auditions for Britain’s Got Talent.
The Selsdon Park is also responsible for the concept of “Selsdon Man”, a term conjured up dismissively by Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, after the hotel had been the venue for a meeting of the Conservative Party shadow cabinet before the 1970 General Election.
The meeting agreed on a manifesto that was notably more ideologically free market than at any previous election after World War II. And while Edward Heath won the election and became Prime Minister, industrial disputes and the Oil Crisis (the first one), stymied the Tories’ plans, and they lost power in 1974.
After Birch’s business collapse, the Selsdon estate was put up for sale through agents Savills in January 2024.
Savills’ initial publicity said that they were seeking to sell a long lease on Birch Selsdon and part freehold interest in the estate, with “price on application”.
A Savills agent told The Caterer: “We anticipate strong interest from the market for this opportunity, appealing to a diverse range of capital sources and accommodating various business plans and asset preferences.”
Given planning restrictions on Green Belt land, there remain widespread concerns among local residents that the parkland might be sold off for housing development. Other scare stories about the building being utilised by the Home Office as emergency housing for refugees have so far proved to be wide of the mark.
Members’ club: Birch installed several new facilities, such as the gym
Birch Selsdon closed following a refurbishment over 18 months which had transformed the slightly faded, old-style hotel so that it included a “wellness” centre, offered pottery and weaving classes and co-working space. The two restaurants were run by noted chef Lee Westcott, while the former golf course was being re-wilded, with ponies, pigs and cattle left to roam.
“There remains several value-enhancing initiatives in place to improve top-line performance and Net Operating Income,” Savills said a year ago, perhaps more in hope than expectation that all that refurb work wasn’t entirely a waste of time.
According to Savills, Birch Selsdon had attracted attracted 640 members by the time of its closure, in which problems at the group’s other sanctuary hotel, in Hertfordshire, compounded the business’s difficulties.
Birch Hospitality and real estate investment firm Aprirose had opened Birch Cheshunt in 2020 – like Selsdon, acquired it from De Vere.
Read more: 100 to lose jobs as Selsdon Birch hotel closes its doors
Read more: Administrators move in to run Selsdon’s ‘shabby chic’ hotel
Read more: Get orf moy laaand! Posh hotel declares parkland a no-go zone
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wonder how long it will be before the land becomes another rabbit hutch housing estate ?
This is a super project for BXB. Oh, hang on.
Maybe the new planning regulations the Government have planned along with this 12 months may provide your answer?
Needs to have the golf course resurrected
The golf is what sustained the hotel for decades including Premiership football teams staying here for Palace games and pre FA Cup finals
Plenty of examples of profitable golf hotels in London and the south east
There are already far too many golf courses blighting the South-East of England. More land is given over to golf than to housing or to agriculture in the region. Places like Selsdon and Cherkley need to be restored to their former natural beauty.
But it was a golf course since 1929 so hardly being given over now is it ?
Would love to metal detector this land and golf course before it gets destroyed with housing or whatever there going to do with it
Such a shame. I have fond memories of celebratory lunches with my parents to mark birthdays. They had their honeymoon there in the 1940’s.
Anyone know how much they want for it?
Anything happening with this since it’s now been a year?