Relaxing Night Away

We booked this hotel on a one night basis with Breakfast included and 35.00 each towards evening meal with a bottle of wine included.
Food was nice portions very small, plenty of meat but not a lot else. Service was very good, but one of the young waiters did not know what she was serving which I though was poor there was not that much on the menu and I would have thought it was standard that they would be trained and taught to know what they were serving.
Breakfast was nice, very chaotic were the buffet was laid out, staff trying to pass, people queuing for the continental offerings. Needs to be looked at, and especially as you had to book in for breakfast and our time slot was 8.15am so quite early.
Overall a nice stay, our room was lovely but did find a ladies curler under the sofa that looked like it had been there a long time!!!! Spa facilities very nice. Just think things need to be reviewed and tweaked.

Disappointing

Our room in the Magnolia Barn annex was spacious and attractive and, with old wooden beams, full of character. The bed was comfortable and we slept well. There were cobwebs in various places and stains on the carpet and the cleaner left a cleaning sponge in the basin - all minor issues but one expects better in a classy hotel such as this.

We were dismayed to see that, despite the notice in Reception, very few staff members and scarcely any guests were wearing face masks when moving about the public areas.

Despite the receptionist confirming, on check-in, our previously booked dinner and breakfast reservations, 2 of the 4 were not found on the booking system when we arrived at the restaurant and there was then a ridiculous amount of faffing about on a tablet by the restaurant controller (I don t know his name or title). Tables were found for us of course but it took more than 5 minutes from greeted to seated! I later checked at Reception with regard to the 2nd breakfast reservation and that too had disappeared off the system. It appears that the Receptionist had somehow managed to delete them!

The service at dinner was pleasant and reasonably efficient although on the second evening we waited quite a while for each course. Portions were very small and the tiny amount of vegetables was derisory. Why do they have to be so mean with what is after all the cheaper element of the main course in particular? In fairness, all the dishes were of good quality, delicious and nicely presented but not worth the money. Our lamb and venison main courses were 28 each ridiculous, especially given the meagre portions!

There was serious confusion about the dessert on the second evening. Having seen lemon meringue tarts being delivered to an adjacent table, we both ordered Lemon curd , assuming that was what we had seen. What came was one dessert with one small scoop of pink sorbet and 3 button-shaped blobs of something yellow. We sent it away, assuming it wasn't for our table, but the young waitress then returned with 2 such dishes. She couldn't explain what it was so I summoned the manager (?) and asked his opinion; he agreed it was sorbet but sought the opinion of a colleague. It transpired that the 3 yellow blobs, dwarfed by the sorbet, were the lemon curd! He agreed that the menu description was highly inaccurate. Anyway my wife accepted hers but I rejected mine and had cheesecake instead - very nice but the same dessert as I had had the previous evening.

Wines are of course expensive (cheapest @ 24) but what is particularly devious on the hotel's part is that the house wines (@ 15) are not shown on the wine list. One has to ask for them; we had the red and the white (both Italian) and they were perfectly acceptable.

The buffet breakfasts were very good, with a large variety of items, though the toast was cold and soft each morning as if it had been standing for some hours.

On principle we disapprove of their policy of applying a 10% discretionary service charge and find it very presumptuous. I know that we had the option of reducing it or removing it from the bill but, as the service had been mostly good and we didn't want to make a fuss and cause embarrassment to the staff, we let it go. We would in any event have left a tip but, given the high prices, not 10%.
Our bill for the second dinner was completely wrong in that none of the 6 items shown were what we actually had! Fortunately, however, the prices were right so, given the fact we had been there almost 2 hours, I didn t bother to mention it.

When I mentioned the issue of food portions on check-out, we were given the justification that it is "fine dining"; well, we simply don't accept that fine dining has to mean tiny portions, especially at the inflated prices they charge! We are not large people with huge appetites but were left wanting more.

We used to dine at the hotel occasionally when we lived in the area in the 80s and are sure that food portions, attention to detail and service were much better in those days. It was very classy, well organised and professional then; this time, although the staff were generally very pleasant, too many aspects of the experience were careless or amateurish. Overall we enjoyed our stay but it certainly wasn't worth the money. I suppose it was unrealistic to expect that after so many years things wouldn't have changed but it seems to us that standards have slipped and the focus is now biased towards profit rather than to the delight and satisfaction of the guests. It's disappointing but I don't think we will be returning.

Room cleanliness and covid compliance

Bathroom dirty. Fly in room. Window sill dirty with mildew.

Vegetarians beware

There is only 1 vegetarian option on the dining menu. For 3 consecutive nights it was risotto. For 2 consecutive nights it was beetroot risotto. We chose from the bar menu on the 3rd night. What did we get? A chickpea burger and chips! So much for fine dining! The hotel knew we were vegetarian and failed us badly.

No review title

Excellent dining but overall experience not notable

Very interesting hotel in great grounds but an average restaurant

We enjoyed our stay and the grounds were nice, especially considering we had good weather. The one evening meal we had in the restaurant was OK / average; but certainly nothing special and not up to the standard we expected.

The room was good, but only reachable via steep and awkward stairs.

On one day breakfast did not open for about 20 minutes past the supposed opening time.

Billesley Manor

We booked our first visit to Billesley Manor and was disappointed initially in the fact that we were in the outbuildings rather than in the manor itself, however the room was clean and comfortable.

It was the meal that really let our stay down - quite tasteless and lacked texture and poor for the establishment. Despite informing them of one of us being coeliac there was, initially, nothing on offer for breakfast for me. However fortunately one of the waitresses came to my rescue and there was plenty on offer including a separate toaster and g/f bread.

Inconsistent service

Building work was going on whilst we were there. We ere informed of this 2 hrs before check in. Although this didn t affect the hotel at all it did affect the spa and we had to cancel some treatments.
It took quite a few calls to get these correctly refunded. That being said the staff were lovely and so helpful, as were the check in staff.
Our first night dinner was fabulous with lovely staff and really tasty food.
We hadn t left and we were already planning the next visit.

The second night however was the complete opposite with poor service cold food and rude staff. Such a shame that our stay was ruined and the inconsistency of service means we won t go back