Our quirky, book-themed rooms all include:
- Breakfast (read more about our delicious breakfasts here)
- En-suite shower room
- Cruelty-free vegan locally-made plastic-free toiletries
- Kettle and fridge with your choice of teas / coffee and plant milk
- Free WiFi
- TV (freeview) and hairdryer
- Towels and bedlinen
- Access to an iron and ironing board
- Use of communal facilities such as our stock of books and board games.
We have five guest rooms:
Virginia Woolf “A Room of One’s Own” single on the ground floor
JRR Tolkien “Hobbit” large ground floor double with accessible shower room
Mary Shelley “Frankenstein” large double on the first floor
Oscar Wilde “Picture of Dorian Gray” double on the first floor
Alice Walker “Color Purple” twin on the first floor
JRR Tolkien
A spacious ground-floor double room with an accessible en-suite, inspired by The Hobbit. The sitting area has two faux leather armchairs, one of which is a riser-recliner.
Accessibility
We’ve done our best to make the room as comfy as possible for folk with mobility issues, but we’ve not been able to widen the entrance doorway which is a “standard” 76cm at the narrowest point. There are two shallow steps up to the guesthouse entrance; we have ramps for these. There are no steps between this room and the communal areas.
Check out our Getting Around page for info about mobility equipment hire and so on.
Price from £99-£120 per night (includes breakfast for two).
Mary Shelley
The Mary Shelley room is a romantic, dramatic, gothic suite with red velvet covered armchairs and a side view of the seafront. A brand-new walk-in shower ensuite completes the luxurious suite.
The Frankenstein author stayed in Torbay for a Summer, writing a children’s book that was only recently discovered in the attic of an Italian villa.
Price from £99-£120 per night (includes breakfast for two).
Oscar Wilde (dog-free room)
A double bedroom with armchairs and a compact en-suite. Inspired by art nouveau styles, peacocks symbolising Wilde’s foppish style, and quotes from his work.
This is our (only) dog-free room, so the best one to book if you are allergic or sensitive to dog fur. Although we clean all our rooms thoroughly, it’s incredibly difficult to completely remove all trace of dogs from carpets and soft furnishings, hence deciding to keep this one room as a dog-free zone. Dogs are allowed everywhere else in the guesthouse – exposure to allergens in communal areas is limited by the reduced amount of time you spend there, and wherever possible we have installed sealed flooring that can be mopped. preventing the build up of potential allergens.
About Oscar Wilde
A witty writer and thinker with a fascinating life story, Oscar Wilde was probably the most famous person to be prosecuted for homosexuality in the UK.
Oscar spent several happy months with his lover Bosie in nearby Babbacombe during 1892-3, where he completed his plays ‘A Woman of No Importance’ and ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan’. Sadly, love letters written in Babbacombe were later used as evidence during his trial and Oscar was imprisoned for the “gross indecency” of loving someone of the same gender. After two years of hard labour, Oscar was released but found he was not accepted back into society. He fled to Paris where he lived for the rest of his life and died penniless. You can read more about the story here.
These days, Torbay is proud to have had Oscar as a resident and celebrates his time in Babbacombe with a blue plaque on the house in which he stayed.
Price from £81-£90 per night (includes breakfast for two).
Alice Walker
Our Alice Walker room takes the colour purple as its theme. It’s a twin bedroom with cosy sitting area and en-suite shower room
About Alice Walker
A novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist, Alice Walker was the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which was awarded for her novel, The Color Purple.
The incredibly powerful and controversial novel was made into a film featuring Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, Margaret Avery and Adolph Caesear.
Alice grew up in a rural town in Georgia and her parents were sharecroppers. She attended a segregated school and received a full scholarship to go to college where one of her lecturers was Howard Zinn. A student in the early 1960s, Alice met Martin Luther King Jr, took part in the 1963 march on Washington, and volunteered to return to the South to register black voters in Georgia and Mississippi. In 1967, Alice married a Jewish civil rights lawyer and they became the first legally-married inter-racial couple in Mississippi. They were harrassed and threatened by racists including the KKK. Since their divorce, Alice has said she has relationships with both men and women.
Alice has also been active in the feminist and peace movements – for example, she was arrested alongside 26 others during an anti-war rally at the White House in 2003.
Price from £72-80 per night (includes breakfast for two).
Contact The Miggi for more information, to check availability, and book your stay!