2019 Editor's Choice Quirky Hotels
Editor’s Choice Quirky Hotels
Lewtrenchard Manor - Summer Escape Special Offer
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.
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 George of Stamford - Sumptuous Sundays Special Offer
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 - Second Night Half Price and a Bottle of Fizz Special Offer
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.
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 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.
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.