A SWINDON brewery will quite literally be at the heart of a new £1.4 million hotel serving the town.

A ceremony this week at Swindon’s newest hotel accommodation, at The White Hart in Stratton St Margaret, saw the building made water tight by managing director George Arkell.

And Mr Arkell ensured the brewery would forever be part of the development by ‘Christening’ the new building with a bottle of Arkell’s Kingsdown beer, burying the bottle top in the final roof tile.

On hand to help was Craig Morton, managing director of Swindon-based Edmont, the contractors building the hotel, and Rob Blake, a local town crier and landlord of The Plough Inn, in Fairford, another Arkell’s pub, who rang his bell to announce the achievement from the top of the scaffolding.

The development, in Oxford Road, is the brewery's latest investment in hotel rooms and comes two years after successfully adding accommodation to The Sun Inn at Coate Water.

The White Hart will open its hotel rooms to the public in the autumn of this year.

And Mr Arkell said the development was also set to be eco-friendly.

“The build is going really well and we’ve also installed solar panels on the room which will deliver over 16kilo watts of energy into the hotel’s electricity supply, reducing its carbon footprint,” he said.

He said the development came as hotel room space in Swindon, particularly on the north side of the town, is hard to find and with The White Hart located right on the busy Oxford roundabout at Swindon, a major gateway to the town, the brewery anticipates the rooms being much in demand.

Arkell’s built The White Hart at Stratton in 1878, extending it substantially in the 1920s. Nearly 100 years’ later, the pub is still going strong.

“Ongoing investment in our pubs is essential to maintain standards and provide customers with the warm welcome they expect,” Mr Arkell added.

“Over half our pubs now offer accommodation, and this build provides increased facilities for visitors to Swindon and the surrounding area.

“We were delighted to be able to celebrate the ‘topping out’ of The White Hart with our town crier landlord Rob Blake.”

For more information on Arkell's hotels, log on to www.arkells.com.