View from the Room: Lansbury Hotel, London
It’s unclear how many times I’ve posted about London and started a sentence ‘If you told me’. Anyway, if you told me three decades ago that not only I’d be visiting E14 but I’d be staying in a boutique hotel here, I may have looked puzzled.
Poplar is in the shadow of Canary Wharf and down the road from Olympic Stratford so it’s unsurprising the area has been re-generating less noisily than Shoreditch and Hackney.
Lansbury Hotel, named after the huge council estate built after the war - in turn named after an MP, is superbly located.
As soon as we arrived, I felt home in the neighbourhood and decided we would stay in East London for the rest of the weekend. We barely popped into Canary Wharf - only on the Sunday afternoon to eat before getting the train home.
The Lansbury is a beautiful old listed building that smells like luxury upon entering with a glorious swirling staircase taking you up to the first floor. Or there’s a lift if you need.
We picked a more spacious room on two floors. Room 107 looked plush but the set up was less luxurious in practice. Having to put something on to run downstairs to the loo, or make drinks to take up - I emptied a tray to use - was a little impractical.
The desk/kitchen amenities, wardrobe are downstairs along with the bathroom and the bedroom is up the twisted staircase on the spacious mezzanine. This had a unnecessarily large TV opposite the large bed although we couldn’t turn down the brightness or locate a sleep button so we just turned it off and listened to the music from our phones. There were speakers on both floors though and lovely coming in from the window.
There is some shelving in the bedroom area although most of the storage is downstairs.
Amenities include:
Bathrobes
Irob/board
Luggage rack
Hairdryer
Full length and other mirrors
There was one USB point at the desk downstairs and one in the bedroom although plenty of sockets.
Refreshments
There was no water provided which I think should just be the norm in hotels and across hospitality. Just a drinking water/hot water dispenser in every room replacing the kettle should do it. Luckily I always carry a bottle and boiled the kettle to have drinking water.
There were tiny cups and saucers so we couldn’t make proper hot chocolate or a long coffee - I did ask but no mugs available.
Good to see two solid drinking glasses though.
We could control some things, like lights from the smart TV but not the heat. Once this was on, it wouldn’t go off and it was exceptionally hot - so we didn’t want hot drinks anyway!
Bathroom
Towel rail
Sanitary bags
Overhead and handheld shower heads.
L’Occitane toiletries. However, we couldn’t refill the bottles as the tops were screwed on! I did bring them home to finish and then took them into our local branch for recycling, who were equally puzzled.
Sadly no body lotion, tissues or face towels but the towels were fine.
The sink tap splashed everywhere around the sink area and the loo roll was awkwardly behind the toilet.
The walls were surprisingly thin for an old building so I guess this was due to modern renovations. We could hear actual conversations going on in other rooms (and worse).
There are steps going into the hotel so tricky with a large case or for anyone with mobility issues or just knackered from the journey. Presume there is another accessible entrance.
The area is fantastic. On Saturday, we had a superb breakfast at Donasao opposite the lively library (possibly the best breakfast of the year so far) and explored the local streets. Over the weekend, we popped to the Isle of Dogs, Greenwich, Stratford and to the Hackney Farm before walking through Columbia Road flower market on Sunday afternoon.
I loved my weekend in East London and may well stay here again, now I know what the shortcomings are and know they have a spa.
February 2022
