What Happened to Merlin Court… After The Hotel Inspector? (Ilfracombe, UK)

What happened after The Hotel Inspector?

The Hotel Inspector (Channel 5) visited the Merlin Court Hotel in Ilfracombe, Devon, in an episode that aired on 16 May 2011 (series 7, episode 5). According to TheTVDB's episode page, Mike Shears had bought the 14-bedroom hotel 13 years earlier and built it around an Arthurian holiday theme drawn from the Knights of the Round Table, with his wife Helen and daughter Carina helping to run it. Debts were mounting and occupancy was falling, and host Alex Polizzi first had to get the family working together.

A Historic England record reproduced on British Listed Buildings shows Merlin Court Hotel in Ilfracombe as Grade II listed since 14 March 1994. It describes a pair of large semi-detached houses, originally called Northcote and Torre House, built in 1872 or slightly earlier in a Tudor style with a four-storey turret. The listing text treats the building as being in hotel use, but it pre-dates the broadcast and says nothing about later trading.

An estate agent listing from Bond Oxborough Phillips for a property it calls Merlin Court, at Torrs Park, Ilfracombe EX34 8AY, gives a guide price of 750,000 pounds for sale by online auction ending on a Wednesday, 23 July, with no year shown. The listing describes the Grade II listed building as a previous seaside boutique B&B and a current holiday let. The page carries no listing date, so it is not clear when the sale took place or whether it completed.

An automated address lookup for the featured name returned the Palm Court Hotel on Wilder Road, Ilfracombe. That is a different hotel, so it was not used.

The North Devon Gazette reported on 15 October 2025 that Galia Grainger, who said she bought the Merlin Court Hotel at Torrs Park about ten years earlier, was marketing it through John D Wood & Co at a guide price of £895,000. According to the paper, the Grade II listed building has 11 bedrooms, nine of them en suite, and about 2.5 acres of grounds, and had been home to her Slimmeria detox and weight-loss business, which she called a former diet retreat. She said a buyer could run it as an Airbnb, holiday let or retreat, or return it to residential use. The paper did not name earlier owners or mention the television programme.