Wedding couple return to buy romantic island hotel

One of the classic English art deco hotels has been bought by a couple who fell in love with it after being married there.

Burgh Island hotel, off the Devon coast at Bigbury-on-Sea, has been bought for £3m by licensed and leisure property consultant Tony Orchard and his lawyer wife, Deborah Clark. They were married there in April.

They took over the hotel and the 26-acre island this month. It is linked to the mainland only twice a day at low tide via a sandy causeway.

Orchard said: "There will be no changes to the hotel's exciting, eccentric English glamour, but regular guests will notice that things are being improved."

A new phone and management system has already been installed, and bathrooms will be improved over the next six months.

The hotel, which has 15 suites, was built in 1929 and was a favourite haunt of Noel Coward and Agatha Christie, who set two of her novels there - And Then There Were None, and Evil Under The Sun.

The couple take over from Tony and Beatrice Porter, who bought the hotel in 1986. Tony Porter has written a book about their time on the island - The Great White Palace, which will be published in May.

Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 18-24 October 2001