The Totara Flat Hotel, now known as the Heatherbell Hotel, represents a continuous stream of history as a hotel for the local timber and farming community and its visitors since about 1870. Known as the Heatherbell Hotel since at least 1919, it is located in a prominent position fronting the eastern side of the main road, State Highway 7, in the small township of Totara Flat.

Totata Flat township was established in the mid 1860s when gold mining in the general Upper Grey area was flourishing and thousands of men were working claims at nearby mines. In 1866, ‘the Totara Flat’ was described as being an area that is ‘chiefly open fern and grass levels, very flat and swampy’. Enough people found it suitable for agricultural purposes that it soon developed into a small farming settlement. By 1869, Antonio Lardi had established a hotel and store. At least one more hotel, that of James Marshall, was built by early 1873. By 1875, William Cochrane had the Globe Hotel at Totara Flat. It likely that one of these early Totara Flat hotels is that now known as the Heatherbell Hotel.

The front part of the timber Heatherbell Hotel has the appearance of an 1870s roadside tavern or accommodation house. This architectural form is an extension of the colonial box cottage into a long rectangular single storey building, flush gabled at either end with a post-verandah along the front. Typical of nineteenth century buildings, the exterior has a brick chimney with cornice, corrugated iron roof with dormer windows, panelled doors and double hung sash windows. The northern third of the western elevation has rusticated weatherboard, whereas the remainder of the main western façade is narrower ship-lapped weatherboard. A pair of gabled wings project to the rear of the building. Previously there was a tall brick chimney on the roof towards the north-west end of the building.

The site itself has been occupied since the 1870s, and the hotel, as one of only two or three hotels in the small town, was a significant focus of community life. Small hotels were common in colonial New Zealand where poor roads made travel slow and physically exhausting by modern standards. The eight-roomed accommodation house was purchased in around 1878 by William Young, a former gold miner and then Totara Flat businessman and farmer, who ran the hotel on and off for some 40 years. Young also owned one of the two stores, the bakery, the livery stables and a significant shareholding in the local dairy factory. The hotel was a central stopping point between the larger towns of Greymouth and Reefton and was frequently a venue for meetings. In 2003, the bar of the Heatherbell Hotel was closed but it continued to operate as a bed and breakfast and provide postal services to the local community.

It appears from the exterior that much timberwork has been replaced over time. The tall brick chimney towards the north-west end of the building was removed some time since 1991. Alterations were made in 2003.