Chimney Pots and Fire Escapes: In Defence of the Window That Faces the Wrong Way

There is a moment, familiar to anyone who has ever checked into a British hotel, when the receptionist slides the key across the desk and says, with a small flourish of civic pride: 'You've got a lovely view.'

Sometimes this is true. Sometimes you open the curtains to a sweep of harbour, or a cathedral, or hills doing their best amateur dramatics in the evening light. And sometimes — and here we must be honest, because honesty is the house style at Oddfellows — you open the curtains and find yourself eyeball to eyeball with the car park.

The Car Park: Britain's Most Underrated Theatre

We would like to formally nominate the hotel car park as one of the great unsung stages of British life. Watch it for an hour and you will see more genuine drama than any box at the Opera House. There's the man reversing a caravan with the grim concentration of a brain surgeon. There's the couple having a row with the windows down, which in Britain means you hear nothing but the engine and the occasional wounded 'well, FINE then.' There's the seagull conducting a one-bird crime spree against a dropped meal deal.

A sea view gives you water. A car park view gives you people. We know which one we'd rather watch with a cup of tea going cold on the windowsill.

What the Back Window Knows

Here's our thesis, and we're sticking to it: the front of a town is its performance. The seafront, the square, the view the postcards were printed for — that's the town in its Sunday best, smiling for the camera. The back of a town is where it actually lives.

Look out of the 'wrong' window and you'll see the fire escapes zigzagging down a brick flank like a fireman's dream. You'll see the pub's chimney pots, and if you're lucky, the gentle drift of the kitchen extraction telling you exactly what time the Sunday roast goes in. You'll see washing lines, allotments, a garage with a hand-painted sign, the tiled back of a bakery that's been feeding the town since the Coronation.

This is the town's actual autobiography. The sea view is the blurb on the back cover.

The Corridors of Truth

There's a related pleasure: the window at the end of the landing, the one nobody photographs. It looks out over the service yard, the bins, the delivery van making its 6am apology to the silence. And yet — through it, you'll often catch the whole town laid out in section, like a doll's house with the front panel off. Rooftops, gardens, a sliver of the river nobody mentions in the brochure. Travel writers call this a 'borrowed view'. We call it the best seat in the house that nobody's fighting you for.

Ten Rooms Where the Back Window Wins

We won't name every name — a good back window, like a good snug, is best discovered rather than listed — but we'll offer a field guide. Seek out:

1. The harbourside inn where the 'poor side' looks over the boatyard and the boatbuilder's radio is permanently tuned to Test Match Special.
2. The market town coaching inn whose rear rooms gaze down the alley at the butcher's delivery of the century.
3. The seaside hotel where the back rooms catch the smokehouse — herring smoke at dawn beats any sunrise.
4. The Pennines guesthouse overlooking the mill chimney, which steams in the rain like a kettle announcing breakfast.
5. The Welsh border inn whose yard window frames the pub next door's beer garden, which is essentially free live theatre.
6. The coastal retreat where the rear rooms face the allotments, and the leeks are, frankly, magnificent.
7. The city bolthole looking down on a ginnel full of street art and a cat with territorial ambitions.
8. The moorland hotel whose 'back' is actually the car park, beyond which the moor begins without asking permission.
9. The estuary inn where the landward window catches the mudflats at low tide, which are more interesting than the sea, and we will not be taking questions.
10. Our own back rooms, naturally — where the view is of Chester's rooftops, chimney pots and all, and the window seat was designed for exactly this kind of sitting.

A Modest Proposal

So the next time the receptionist apologises — apologises — for the room at the back, wave the apology away. Book it on purpose. Take the flask, take the good chair, take the long view over the bins and the bicycle sheds.

The postcard view tells you where a town wants to go on its holidays. The back window tells you how it lives the rest of the week. And anyone who'd rather look at an empty horizon than a man fighting a caravan is, with respect, staying in the wrong hotel.