A look inside Mount Victoria Manor, which is up for sale.

The Blue Mountains retreat built in 1876 for John R. Fairfax has come onto the market.

Mount Victoria Manor at 11 Montgomery St, Mount Victoria, is a working hotel and features ten rooms with ensuites, four large family rooms with ensuites, one two-bedroom apartment and one four-bedroom apartment.

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The current owners have redesigned the property as “heritage with a twist”.

The hotel also has a commercial kitchen, a restaurant dining room that can seat 80 people and an enclosed alfresco-styled observatory.

The property was built by John R. Fairfax as a mountain retreat in 1876 but he passed away a year later. It was snapped up by G.H. Cooper and turned into a hotel, changing hands many times since.

It last sold in May 2015 for $1,100,000 and before that in June 1991 for $670,000.

Natural light filters through the observatory.

Wow.

Current owners Denise and partner Garry purchased the property in 2015 on a whim — they were travelling through to the town of Orange — and they haven’t looked back.

The perfect place for a sundowner.

Muted greens give a regal feel to the restaurant.

The couple only planned to hold the property for five years and that business plan is coming to an end in April next year so they have commenced their exit strategy while completing the last few smaller projects that are left.

“I did a bit of hospitality as a flight attendant with Ansett but when we bought it I certainly had no background in running a hotel — we just thought it was an amazing building to be involved in and we bought it and started running and repairing it,” she said.

Delightful wooden furniture compliments the colour scheme.

Photographs of the original property line the main corridor.

“Before this I was a nurse and my partner is a truck driver … he does logistics now and I do people! A lot of our return customers come here as their destination, although we still get a lot of business from people starting through.

“We like to think of the property and atmosphere as accessible and mountains friendly with style and not pretentious.

Relaxing views from the long balcony.

One of the charming bedrooms.

“Ideally the buyers of the property would be young and have a business background. We have run the manor in two stages I guess … when we first took over our life was this hotel and we were open seven days a week. Now the new business model is working from Thursday to Sunday only.”

Mount Victoria Manor is listed through Hartley Realty & Lifestyle Properties.