Brunton Boatyard
A 22-room harbour-front hotel in Fort Kochi, built on the site of a British shipyard, with colonial-style interiors and a garden pool.
- Neighbourhood
- Fort Kochi harbour front, Kochi
- Status
- Open
Why we recommend it
Fort Kochi is a town of layers, Portuguese, Dutch, British, Jewish, Arab and Malayali, and this hotel sets out to be a way of reading them. The building borrows from each of the colonial periods, the lounge is furnished like a small museum of the port, and the main restaurant composes its menu from the cooking of the communities that settled here.
The other reason is the water. The hotel sits directly on the harbour mouth, and from the rooms guests watch container ships, ferries and fishing boats pass at close range, with dolphins at times and the sun setting behind the palms of Vypin. It is the natural base for the town’s art season, described in The Kochi-Muziris Biennale: India’s Largest Art Exhibition, in an Old Spice Port, and a good first stop before the backwaters.
Rooms & Suites
There are 22 rooms, in three categories: sea-facing rooms, a small number without the harbour view, and a sea-facing Deluxe Suite arranged over three floors. Rooms have four-poster beds, teak and antique furniture chosen by the owning family, some of it original to the colonial period and some reproduced, and a patio or balcony over the pier. Bathrooms are large, with both a bath and a shower, and in the sea-facing rooms they too look over the water. In keeping with the period mood, rooms are without televisions.
Dining
The principal dining room is History, the hotel’s restaurant devoted to the cooking of Fort Kochi’s communities. Each dish is attributed to one of them: a fish preparation from the Jewish kitchen, another of Arab origin, the fish moilee of the Syrian Christians, vindaloo from the Portuguese, and a mutton curry recalling the first-class railway dining cars.
Armoury, on the floor below, takes its name from the old guns and swords on its walls and serves Kerala dishes alongside continental ones, with a bar and tables in the garden. Terrace Grill is an open-air seafood restaurant where the day’s catch is grilled to order; it generally closes during the monsoon. Dinner can also be arranged on the pier.
Design
The hotel was built on the footprint of the shipyard over five to six years in the 1990s. Its vocabulary is that of the old port: high timber ceilings, terracotta floors, lime-plastered walls hung with period photographs and maps. The reception hall has a lofty ceiling with hand-pulled punkah fans and portraits of the sailors and travellers who shaped Kochi, commissioned by Jose Dominic of CGH Earth.
Among the objects in the lounge are a palanquin, a billiard table, a large anchor and glazed clay jars said to have come from the Chinese, Portuguese and Dutch ships of the spice trade. Old rain trees shade the courtyard. The Manta, the last surviving boat built by the Brunton family, is kept at the hotel.
Wellness & Spa
The pool is set in the garden beside the water, and the ground-floor rooms open towards it. The hotel has an Ayurveda centre and a gym. A sunset cruise on the harbour, a cooking demonstration and bicycles for exploring the old town are part of the house programme. For a full course of treatment rather than a massage, see Ayurveda in Kerala: How a Panchakarma Stay Works.
Location
The hotel is on Calvetty Road, on the harbour front of Fort Kochi, within walking or cycling distance of St Francis Church and the galleries of the old town. Mattancherry, with its synagogue in Jew Town, its palace museum and its spice and antique markets, is a short ride away. Cochin International Airport is 52 kilometres from the hotel.
CGH Earth also runs Chittoor Kottaram, a single-key palace on the Kochi backwaters. The wider state is covered in our guide to Kerala for wellness and water: Ayurveda, backwaters and Fort Cochin stays.
- Address
- 1/498, Calvetty Road, Fort Kochi, Kerala 682001, India
- Website
- Official website