Malmaison's daring new Hotel in Oxford is an ambitious conversion of a once derelict former prison. The prison itself was originally adapted from Oxford Castle which pre-dates the Norman conquest of 1066.

Keith Shearer, Executive Chief of both the Malmaison and Hotel Du Vin Hotel chains, was responsible for the hotel's new kitchens which were to be housed in unique and macabre location - the prison's former hanging pit.

Trying to design and install a commercial kitchen in any converted building can be difficult at the best of times, but working in an ancient castle must have been a unique experience?

"The whole project was overseen by English heritage, so when the main contractors were excavating the site, every time they came across some ancient relic, artefact or - as happened quite often - human bones, English Heritage sent a little boffin with a microscope and a toothbrush to painstakingly remove it. We had to be really sensitive to the fact that the site dates back over a thousand years."

The fabric of the building itself can't have been easy to deal with either?

"The fact is that we were turning a prison into a hotel, and just trying to create a practical kitchen environment within a site that was never really meant to have that. The walls are four feet thick and the doorways just two feet six wide so Vision had some real logistical issues to deal with. The kitchens' stove is about twelve feet long by six feet deep and the only way to get it in was by craning it through the roof during the build, then covering it in plastic until the builders finished"