I'll start by staying that overall we would rate our stay as "Good" especially taking into account the price we paid but TA doesn't have a rating for that. A TA rating of 3/5 feels a bit mean but 4/5 indicates "very good which our stay wasn't quite hence the 7/10 overall rating in the title, reasons for which will be explained below:

We recently had a 1 night midweek Dinner bed and breakfast stay in a Deluxe room so this is not a "wedding" or "wedding guest" review like most of the others on this page.

There was a warm and friendly welcome on arrival (from the owner I believe) and our room was clean, spacious and quiet with a comfortable bed and lovely views and we slept well. The hairdryer (travel size and low powered) was bolted into the drawer of the dressing table, had a curly cable that wasn't very stretchy and had to have a button continually pressed to make it work. In short, bring your own! Shower pressure wasn't brilliant but it's an old building so to be expected. The house is beautifully furnished, clean and cosy and the grounds are well kept and a pleasure to look around and sit in to relax.

It was nice to find there were 2 EV charging points (7kw) available (chargeable) but bring your own cable. It uses the Fuuse network and we had some problems setting up and downloading the app due to signalling/connection issues so suggest you do that prior to arriving to save time if you intend using the chargers.

So far so good! Things started to go a bit downhill when we went downstairs to the bar for a pre-dinner drink. Apparently we couldn't have a cocktail as they can't make them (though every spirit and mixer seemed to be on display) but a later perusal of the dinner menu showed a cocktail list on the back so ??? We had 2 G&Ts (room temp as no ice) and after a while we were called in to the dining room (a surprisingly functional and modern affair compared to the grandeur of the rest of the house) where our starters were waiting. We were halfway through them when the waitress brought some bread to the table (which my starter really needed) and then later on some drinking water which had seemingly been forgotten about. Maybe this could have been forgiven if she was rushed off her feet but there was only another couple and us in the dining room! The wine we pre-ordered was brought and plonked on the table after our starter after we had finished our starter and we had to go and find the waitress to ask her to open the bottle. She then disappeared for some time taking the wine with her before bringing the bottle back with the foil completely butchered, obviously not being able to find neither a foil cutter or a wine bucket to then place the un-chilled wine in and then didn't bother to pour it into the glasses leaving us to do it ourselves. I can't remember ever having a bottle of wine at dinner and it not being opened properly in front of us!

Rest of the meal was OK, Mr W's pie and chips (though not really a pie, more like a casserole in a dish with a puff pastry lid) was tasty and my pork was fine and overall not bad value at all considering the price. Breakfast was a limited self-serve cold selection with pre-made tea/coffee from a thermos jug and cooked to order hot items served at the table which were OK. Note that breakfast finishes at 9am, rather early if you're on holiday and like a bit of a lie-in!

At checkout I would have brought the service issues up with the owner but she was in a hurry to deal with something else and rushed off leaving us to settle our bill with the waitress who had dealt with us the previous evening.

In summary this is a beautiful house in a stunning location but the emphasis seems to be placed more on it being run as a wedding venue than as a hotel for overnight guests and accordingly service standards certainly fell short of those we were expecting for a 4* hotel. However if we ignore the negatives we experienced, for the DBB price we paid it still offers good value for money.