THE manager of Oxford’s Randolph Hotel has said the fire caused millions of pounds of damage.

The Gothic building has stood in the city centre for 150 years, but on Friday evening a blaze spread from the ground-floor kitchen, up the back of the four-storey hotel and on to the roof.

Speaking to the Oxford Mail last night, general manager Michael Grange said while the damage had been “devastating”

he hoped the hotel could reopen as early as Saturday.

Today some staff will return to the building for the first time since the blaze and maintenance crews and structural engineers will begin the repair work.

Mr Grange said: “A lot of the hotel looks like it has not been damaged at all. Then you go to the back-of-house areas and you can see the damage is pretty devastating.

“When I was standing outside on Friday and saw the flames coming out of the roof, I thought it would be burnt to the ground.

“But it is a big building and the bulk is absolutely fine. One thing that was very lucky was we had just finished refurbishing our restaurant and that has only a small bit of water damage.

“We are hoping the fire service will hand it back to us today and we have already got people on standby.

“The moment we can get in properly, our top priority will be to make it safe for guests, that is paramount, and we will then analyse whether we can open again.

“It will certainly be a limited service, but at the moment we are hoping that will happen next Saturday.”

Areas worst affected in the hotel include the ground floor kitchen – where the blaze is thought to have started after a cooking accident – as well as surrounding rooms and corridors.

Mr Grange said a sales office where six people usually work had been “completely gutted” and the staff restaurant is also badly damaged.

Upstairs on the fourth floor, where the fire burnt through much of the roof structure, several bedrooms were affected.

Once firefighters hand the building back, Mr Grange said they would first seek to put scaffolding up around the front of the building to ensure the structure was safe.

Firefighters were concerned during the weekend that damage to the roof posed a risk of debris falling from the front gable.

Since getting the fire under control on Friday, they have worked through the building to check for lingering “hot spots” and structural weaknesses.

Mr Grange added: “The hotel is a listed building, so the repairs will be complex and extremely expensive, it is likely to run into millions.

“But all the systems worked well and the fire was contained to certain areas.

“We have been overwhelmed by the support from the people of Oxford and our guests. I can’t say how grateful we are.”

Leeds businessman Paul Kelly, who was evacuated from the hotel on Friday with wife Geraldine, praised Randolph staff for their response to the fire.

On Saturday morning he said an “operations centre”

was set up in the Oxford Playhouse, down the road, and a system organised for residents to arrange for luggage to be retrieved.

Tea, coffee and snacks were also made available for guests.

Mr Kelly, 52, added: “We got our luggage back no problem and the staff were really helpful.

“They really did do everything they could have.”

A spokesman for Macdonald Hotels, which owns the Randolph, confirmed nobody had been injured in the fire.

He added: “Our immediate priority was to conduct the safe evacuation of all our guests and staff within the property.

“An internal investigation has already begun to establish the cause of the incident.”