Situated at the base of The Pennines, the award-winning Whitehall Hotel is a striking Victorian Mansion set within 3 acres of scenic gardens and woodland.
The Whitehall Hotel is the oldest hotel in Blackburn with Darwen. A mill owners home built in 1898 and converted into a traditional country house hotel in 1968. The hotel has been family run for over fifty years and the current custodians have owned the Whitehall since 2003.
Neil and Tracy Bullows, have strong roots within the catering and hospitality industry for a good few years. Since their purchase of the Whitehall it has continued to be a destination wedding and events venue. The hotel boasts extensive events and meeting rooms with fifteen comfortable bedrooms.
In March of 2020, the hotel was severely impacted by the pandemic and as a small business with no revenue and no pot of gold to call upon quite literally was in dire straits.
The team were furloughed and the family moved back into the hotel to be on hand for concerned bridal couples and security following a break-in and vandalism.
During that Summer it was evident that COVID 19 was not going anytime soon and something needed to be done to ensure that doors were to reopen.
Several brainstorming sessions took place usually after trips to the cellar with stocks becoming increasingly low as did the optimism.
After a chance conversation with a wedding consultant the name of Paul Sheerin was mentioned. Neil and Paul both attended the same school and have known each other from a distance for over forty years.
Paul is a fully fledged master distiller and the owner of www.defiancespirits.co.uk based on the outskirts of Manchester. An award winner of true note his Defiance Navy Strength winning best in show at the San Francisco World Spirit Awards - a big deal!
In early September alongside partial reopening with Rishi’s dishes we set about our gin journey under Paul’s guiding hand. After several months of Zooming and telephone calls, recipe changes and distillations we produced our finished Signature London Dry Gin on the 26.11.2020.
To date we are the only hotel in Lancashire to have an on-site spirits distillery.
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