Down Hall Hotel, Spa & Estate

Historic building well preserved

We requested to stay in the historic building and were impressed with the decoration and preservation of this part of the building.
Reception was slow on arrival and departure with only one person on the desk each time who was pleasant but not efficient and each time decided to prioritise other guests.
The dining room is essentially an enlarged corridor between the historic building and new buildings and despite only a quarter to the tables being occupied dinner service was very slow - they appeared to have booked a function elsewhere in the hotel without hiring additional staff. It would have helped to have sharper knives for the food! Breakfast in the same dining space worked better as it was cafeteria style in keeping with the furnishings.
Dinner took so long we were not able to use the spa.
We were glad to have booked Down Hall and discovered its history but are unlikely to visit again.

Down Hall 4/10

Down Hall SHOULD have been a beautiful place to stay, however, the room was far too hot - no a/c - and the window was restricted from opening more than a couple of inches.
The food in the restaurant was lovely however, the portions were far too small to fill even the smallest of eaters.
Therefore, due to the issues listed above (no air con and small food portions) unfortunately makes Down Hall poor value for money, (I paid over 300 for one night, so to be terribly hot and hungry all night, spoiled my experience) which is a shame given that it is a fabulous building set in wonderful grounds.

Lovely grounds and spacious comfortable room let down by service and food portions

The check in went smoothly, the room was comfortable, spacious and quiet and outlook was lovely with lawn and woods beyond. However, using the lift to the first floor, we encountered an unpleasant toilet smell in the lift and two of the hallways. Thankfully, our room and immediate corridor were fine.

There was a wedding on, so the hotel was busy. We went downstairs in the early evening to have a drink before the meal. Staff were running around frantically, trying to serve the guests on the terrace. We were ignored for 15 minutes, despite being near the bar and being told to have a seat and someone would take our order. To his credit, the barman did give us a drink on the house as we d been waiting so long. We were hoping to have a quiet drink but with Ibiza nights trance music blaring outside, literally shaking the windows and competing cool jazz in the bar, this was impossible.

Dinner was fine although portions were rather stingy and a large part of the menu had supplements over and above the DB&B package that we d booked. Service was rather slow and the waitress was inexperienced - for example, the wine was just poured without us tasting and plates cleared before we d finished eating.

I d be interested in seeing if the experience is any better without a wedding/themed event on but they seemed to be preparing for another wedding the next morning at breakfast so I suspect this is infrequent.

Not the birthday I had hoped for and unfortunately we will not be returning.