2021 Editor's Choice Quirky Hotels
Editor’s Choice Quirky Hotels
Talland Bay Hotel
Talland-by-Looe
Whether you’re sitting on a zebra-print sofa looking at the 3D Mickey Mouse on the wall or perched on a wooden bench with giant budgies in the garden with its fairy statues, you’ll find this coastal hotel ‘curiouser and curiouser’.
The Dial House
Norwich
Rooms are geographically themed so you can stay in Africa, with vaulted beams and slipper bath, or in Parisian Garret with its antiques. A revolving bookcase reveals a secret dining room, and everything is for sale in the retail wing.
The Ceilidh Place – Ullapool
Ullapool
The Urquhart family’s hotel has only 13 rooms, but it also has a bookshop, coffee shop and events space as well as the more traditional bar and restaurant. There’s even a bunkhouse across the car park for those travelling on a budget.
The Quay House
Clifden
Don’t be surprised to find a Buddha statue rubbing shoulders with a Cupid in the Foyles’ harbourside B&B, packed with curios, including clocks – broken and working – a collection of bovine horns and family photos a-plenty.
Belle Tout Lighthouse
Eastbourne
Where better than a lighthouse lantern room for superb sea views? There are panoramic vistas of the South Downs, too, and of the night sky. You can stay in the atmospheric Keeper’s Loft in the tower, where the bed is reached by ladder.
Twr y Felin Hotel
St Davids
It’s not every day you find a contemporary art museum in a Georgian windmill. Works include Marcus Oleniuk’s photographs of St Davids peninsula: there are magnificent views of the real thing from the observatory above the Tower Suite.
No.15 Great Pulteney
Bath
The Georgian facade may be traditional but there’s a world of eccentricity within: the spa is in a former coal cellar, room keys are kept in a doll’s house, and The Dispensary restaurant holds the contents of an antique chemist’s shop.
The Old Railway Station
Petworth
A first-class stay at this converted station is just the ticket, especially if you book one of the romantic Pullman carriages. Check-in is at the old ticket booth, with breakfast served on the platform or in the original Waiting Room.
Tuddenham Mill
Newmarket
The waterwheel is in the bar and the gearing apparatus of this 18th-century mill is on show in the dining room, with its original beams. Some bedrooms have access to the millstream, where swans glide in sight of the enormous chimney.
St Cuthbert’s House
Seahouses
You can seek sanctuary in Jeff and Jill Sutheran’s imaginatively converted 19th-century chapel with its arched windows, wood flooring and double-height living room. Even the original carved pulpit and the harmonium are still present.
2020 Editor's Choice Quirky Hotels
Editor’s Choice Quirky Hotels
Howtown Hotel
Penrith
It’s traditional with a capital T at the ‘delightfully old-fashioned’ Howtown, with dinner gong, no in-room TVs, and extremely limited Wi-Fi.
Cley Windmill
Cley-next-the-Sea
Rising above the reed beds and River Glaven in a pretty village no longer ‘next the sea’, Julian and Carolyn Godlee’s 19th-century windmill offers characterful accommodation.
Widbrook Grange
Bradford-on-Avon
‘Staying here was an experience,’ wrote Guide inspectors of Nick Dent’s Georgian farmhouse hotel, which is so dog-friendly it even hosts doggie birthday parties, and where creative reuse has been raised to an art form.
Pool House
Poolewe
For over 30 years, the Harrison family has greeted visitors to their former 18th-century fishing lodge with ‘genuine warmth and interest’.
The Gunton Arms
Thorpe Market
Ivor Braka has indulged his passion for art at his pub-with-rooms set in a deer park near the north Norfolk coast.
The Pig on the Beach
Studland
A higgledy-piggledy 19th-century marine villa with a jumble of towers and gables gazes across Studland Bay to the chalk stacks of Old Harry Rocks.
Glazebrook House
Totnes
Callooh! Callay! On the fringe of Dartmoor national park, this Alice-themed hotel is a veritable cabinet of curiosities, a treasure trove of wit and invention.
Low Mill Guest House
Leyburn
Spending a night on a riverbank, in an 18th-century watermill, with Wensleydale’s gentle hills all around: what could be more restorative for the soul? This ‘wonderful guest house’ has been renovated by Neil and Jane McNair with flair and imagination.
Artist Residence Oxfordshire
South Leigh
On the outside, it looks like a chocolate box stone thatched pub, but that belies the funky interior of this Cotswold outpost of Justin and Charlotte Salisbury’s portfolio of Artist Residence properties in Brighton and London (see main entries) and Penzance (see Shortlist entry).
Austwick Hall
Austwick
From the grand entrance hall with its flamboyant staircase to the antique-furnished bedrooms and Italianate garden, this country house B&B adds an exotic touch to a Yorkshire Dales village.
2019 Editor's Choice Quirky Hotels
Editor’s Choice Quirky Hotels
Lewtrenchard Manor
Okehampton
Renaissance woodwork. An ornate Jacobean plaster ceiling. A Rococo fireplace flanked by putti. The extravagant 19th-century rebuilding of an ancient manor house was the work of squire, parson and prolific writer Sabine Baring-Gould.
The George of Stamford
Stamford
The gallows sign no longer hangs across the road from this historic inn, but the old waiting rooms are still marked ‘London’ and ‘York’, from its days as a stagecoach stop. Look out for the portrait and walking sticks of England’s one-time heaviest man.
From £195.00 per night
The Dial House
Norwich
More than a thousand weird and wonderful objects are for sale at this Grand-Tour-themed small hotel, eclectically furnished throughout. Sleep in the Raj room; buy a white elephant, enter the Natural History room through a display case door.
Hazlitt’s
London
A cluster of Soho Georgian houses here combine as a boutique hotel brimming with wit and studied eccentricity – antiques and curios, oil paintings, throne loos, books, busts, vintage beds. Public rooms are patrolled by Sir Godfrey the cat.
Knockinaam Lodge
Portpatrick
Churchill loved his long, hot baths. Book the room he slept in at this former coastal hunting lodge (where he laid plans for D-Day with Eisenhower), and you can wallow in the very same enamelled concrete tub.
The Star Inn at Harome
Helmsley
There is a piano in room 8 at this estimable restaurant-with-rooms, should you wish to practise the Moonlight Sonata at dead of night. Or pot the black at the snooker table in room 5. Michelin-starred cooking raises more smiles.
The Pig on the Beach
Studland
Whimsical touches at this neo-Gothic fantasy include wood carvings from a Portuguese palace, a coat of arms prop from Pirates of the Caribbean. Sleep in a shepherd’s hut, a thatched dovecote or a room with a loo with a view.
Roundwood House
Mountrath
Many hotels have a ‘library’, sometimes just a token bookshelf, but in the grounds of this Georgian mansion and lovable, idiosyncratic hotel, a galleried library contains a thousand tomes dedicated to the evolution of civilisation.
The Old Railway Station
Petworth
Just the ticket for train buffs! Guests check in at the former parcels office at this beautiful disused station, sleep in a colonial style bedroom, or a Pullman carriage with Edwardian fittings, take breakfast in the waiting room.
St Cuthbert’s House
Seahouses
At breakfast, raise your eyes from your oak-smoked kipper to admire the pillars and old harmonium in the former sanctuary at this deconsecrated Presbyterian church, now an award-winning B&B and music venue.
From a retreat favoured by Dylan Thomas to a suite in a windmill, views of Snowdonia to a former priory inhabited by Augustinian monks, the UK has a variety of unique hotel experiences to choose from. Each beautifully decorated and offering its own brand of warmth and hospitality, there’s an abundance of details and experiences that make for a quirky getaway.
Whether it’s interiors that inspire a little bit of magic or rooms that are geographically themed to transport you to an African safari or a Parisian Garret. Perhaps you will sleep in an observatory tower or a converted chapel. Travel to a lighthouse brought back from disrepair, or dine in a restaurant that’s decorated like an antique chemist’s shop. Or get whisked away with a night in a romantic Pullman carriage.