Locals say an asylum centre in a 270-year-old hotel has ripped “the lifeblood” out of a beautiful English village just ten minutes from Prince William and Princess Kate’s cottage. Residents say crowds of “single young men” are “intimidating” them in the once quiet community after asylum seekers were moved into the Manor Hotel in Datchet in 2022.

“My daughter’s biggest concern with it is that it’s single young men [living there]”, 70-year-old grandmother Lynne Le Marchand told Daily Express. The former NHS worker said that she and her daughter, who lives in the village with her 4-year-old girl and 14-month-old boy, have felt threatened by the illegal migrants. Referencing a recent run-in she and her daughter had, she said: “Her and I walked along to the Windsor farm shop a month or so ago, and there’s a big group of them. She said, ‘I don’t know about you, but I find that a bit intimidating’”.

Pointing at the wooden-beamed hotel, which had been operating as an inn since at least 1753, she said: “That beautiful building could be put to far better use”.

Retired engineer David Cachia, 76, who has lived with his wife Sandra in Datchet since 1996, said residents were not consulted on the hotel’s conversion into an asylum centre.

“We were not asked for an opinion, we were just told what was going to happen”, David said. “And, of course, that caused a great deal of resentment and took away the lifeblood of the village. We had our reception there 30 years ago.”

He continued: “It was a real hive of activity. It was a cultural meeting place.” The stripping of the village’s focal point is a “tragedy for the local residents”, he added.

“I mean, obviously, I believe people should be treated with respect, but taking away public facilities at our expense, I think, is a double whammy. Not only are people coming across illegally and being given shelter, but they’re elbowing out all the locals of the facilities that we all enjoy”, he said. “That’s caused a load of resentment, especially to the surrounding shops”.

Anne, one of the volunteers in the Bridge cafe, where Daily Express spoke to David and Sandra, said simply: “We can’t keep flooding the country”.

One of the high street shops that claims to have been hit in the pocket by the hotel’s conversion to an asylum centre is Nibbles Cafe, just yards away. Manager Cheryl Bohdjalian, 58, said: “It’s not good for business is it? Say I wanted to sell this business, and then we’ve got that [the hotel] opposite. A lot of residents upped and left as well, it has just devalued everything.

“I remember when it used to be a nice hotel and residents would go in there. It’s the hub of the village but now you’re not allowed to go in there. It doesn’t bring any tourism here, it doesn’t bring any trade here.”

Datchet, home to around 4000 people, is only ten minutes by car from Prince William and Princess Kate’s Adelaide Cottage. Staff at the local Oakwood Estates estate agents said they frequently saw members of the royal family driving through the village.

Despite the Home Office being poised to relocate the migrants to Hounslow by the end of May, Cheryl and others this newspaper spoke to are worried that the hotel’s owner won’t replace the asylum seekers with holidaymakers. That’s because during the pandemic, the four-star accommodation was used to house the homeless, and several locals we spoke to said they created even more social challenges than the asylum seekers.

“During Covid, he had all the homeless in, and that was more negative than the immigrants, to be honest, because they came out in the village”, Cheryl said.

“They were taking Amazon parcels off people’s doorsteps, drug-dealing.“We were doing afternoon teas, and we were in the shop, and we could see a lot of it going on. Blatant drug dealing”, she added.

One of the cafe’s customers, who did not want to be named, said he saw homeless residents of the hotel using “crack” and “needles”.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are delivering on our pledge to close asylum hotels, which will drastically reduce taxpayer costs and give control back to local communities.

“The asylum system ground to a standstill under the last Government, but we are reversing that damage by fixing the foundations of our immigration system. We have increased asylum decision-making by 52% in the last three months of 2024 and removed more than 24,000 people with no right to be here.”