COLWALL may no longer feature on a list of British racecourses but a hotel built when the village was alive with runners and riders is still going strong.

The Colwall Park Hotel, which celebrates its centenary this year, was designed and built for racehorse owners to stay in when Colwall Green was one of the most popular courses in the West Midlands.

Developed by course owner Roland Cave-Browne-Cave, it was part of a collection of buildings linked to the racecourse. Horses were stabled at the hotel and Caves Folly while jockeys stayed at the Horse and Jockey Pub.

Although the racecourse closed to National Hunt Racing in 1939, the hotel has remained a centre of village life and has been owned by Iain and Sarah Nesbitt since 2000.

"To have a very big hotel like this right in the centre of a small village is very unusual," said Mr Nesbitt.

He added Colwall was a big part of the hotel's appeal for visitors: "People like the Post Office, the local shop and the pub over the road - it's a nice community."

The hotel's history between 1905 and the 1960s is cloudy, but Mr Nesbitt said it was always a hotel and thinks the average owner must have been there 10 or 12 years.

A sales ledger for 1907 reveals some secrets, including the amount of bubbly the hotel guests drank. One week's stock-take shows £2, 14 shillings and 6 pence of champagne sold, compared to 66 pence of port.

A large swimming pool in the two-acre garden is now covered over, but it is known the hotel ran a swimming club for village residents and many learnt to swim there.

David Breare has been a customer for 20 years but first visited in 1938 when he was a pupil at Malvern Boys' College.

His friend, Logan Scott-Bowden, was the son of the hotel and racecourse owner at the time.

"My earliest memory of the hotel is when we were both in quarantine. We were both 18 and we spent the day there to keep away from the other boys," he said.

For a time the hotel had its very own artist-in-residence as Dame Laura Knight, the first female painter elected into the Royal Academy, stayed there and had a studio in the stable block during the 40s and 50s. Several of her paintings now hang on the hotel's walls.

Today it is a popular place for celebrities performing at Malvern Theatres to stay.

Mr and Mrs Nesbitt came up from Sussex to take over the hotel as a retirement project. It is now the only place in Ledbury and Malvern in the Michelin Good Food Guide, has been awarded two AA food rosettes every year since 1997 and won the Birmingham Evening Mail restaurant of the year award in 2003

The hotel is Colwall Probus Club's meeting venue and this year hosted Colwall Rotary Club's Tree of Light, which raised £12,000 for St Michael's Hospice.

Birthday celebrations involve a series of dinners, including a Italian night in April and an Australian night in October, where local group The Singing Sous Chefs will perform.