We stayed here as part of a tour package., three nights. The room was clean. It was also noisy, above the kitchen and over the staff entrance, so the noise started way early in the morning. There was a charming sitting area but the chairs were butt-sprung. The bed was fine but the pillows were really hard. The bathroom was basic and with the plug-hot/cold-separate faucet-business. Typical of nicer British hotels, there was a small tea service in the room. The decor was atractive. So OK, but not luxurious in any way. Certainly not posh!
The staff at the front desk were excellent, very nice. The head waiter and his assistant in the dining room the same. I guess the wait staff was too, they were a bunch of kids from all over Europe who spoke extremely limited English. That was difficult and uncomfortable. We were very surprised to not find professionals working there.
This is a hotel that has great pretense to grandeur. the building is interesting and the grounds are pretty in an overgrown sort of way. We had tea in the garden, just shortbread and tea and a scone, it was very pleasant. Breakfast was a buffet, it was decent and the pastries were very good indeed. But they fell apart at supper, so badly that it reminded us of John Cleese and Fawlty Towers.
One night they had the wrong menu of specials so after we all ordered the head honcho had to go around and apologize and get people to order off the menu. OK, mistakes happen, but the next night it was the same wrong specials menu and nobody noticed until we got to laughing so hard we figured we'd better clue them in.
Supper is quite a ritual. You get sat down in one of the rooms like the library and then they take your drink order and bring you some strange little appetizers. "Little" and "strange" are the perfect description. I recall a pureed cauliflower tart thing that tasted slightly dank like only a cabbage-family vegetable can (it was fine, just not very good) and there were other oddments. They did offer some nice olives. Then they walk you to your table.
The supper menu was peculiar, and had such things as the loin of some kind of fish. (Fish don't have loins.) It was tasteless and had a weird green crust along one side that was unidentifiable. The lamb dish was good. The chicken, meh. However, we haven't been so amused (in a sad way) in years in a restaurant. The foreign kids were continually adding and subtracting silverware (rather cheap-looking stainless in a dizzying variety of pieces) and they brought, among other things, an amuse-bouche every evening that was not amusing at all, it ranged from ordinary to unpleasant. Then they brought the palate cleanser, a sorbet. Imagine smoked paprika and passion fruit, or orange and ginger that was so hot it burned your mouth. That wasn't very good either.
It was a huge disappointment, the food is so incredibly nouvelle cuisine as to be almost inedible. The presentations were nice to look at but it just didn't taste particularly good. This is a two-star restaurant and four-star hotel according to the sign on the front by the door, but it sure didn't seem like it. If we hadn't prepaid as part of a tour, we would not have eaten there after that first peculiar meal.
Again, the staff was very nice. Really pleasant. The non-English-speakers were nice enough too, just clearly distressed most of the time because they didn't understand anything much so they were like the proverbial deer in the headlights. That made us uncomfortable. We would not recommend it to anyone for the rooms or the food. Maybe afternoon tea--but you can get that all over the place. It's not near town so you can't get away to eat somewhere else unless you have a car. read more