After a 5 1/2 hour car journey arrived at the hotel. Open reception and bar area greeted us. The reception staff were not very welcoming and helpful. We were not told where the lifts were to get to our room or asked if we wanted a daily newspaper the following morning. Our second floor room was clean, adequate sized room with tv and tea/coffee facilities, safe and ironing board! The bathroom had only one free shower/shampoo, no sewing kit, or any other requirements needed, ie, body lotion, hair net etc. Bathroom was clean but there was no fan! Signs were displayed to ask residents to leave the door open! Room facilities information was not there, ie tv instructions, laundry facilities etc. Noisy residents disturbed us nightly as our room was situated in the middle of a corridor.

The swimming pool was very small, one child's small pool and a very small adult's pool. There was a gym attached to the hotel but did not use it.

We ate out at Loch Fyne in Winchester. The hotel's own restaurant was not appetising. Breakfast on the other hand was excellent. The staff could not be more helpful. The choice adequate and suitable for all tastes.

We will look at other hotels in the area when we visit again and as a last resort may stay at this hotel.

A visit to Winchester Cathedral is a must.

We checked into the Winchester on May 11, 2009 after making a reservation several months in advance and requesting the ground floor due to problems with stair climbing. Friends were with us so we had two rooms. One room was on the first floor (2nd in US) and the other in the basement (#2), The room on the first floor was nice although small but the basement room was so small you couldn't get the closet door open all the way. But the main problem was the manager on duty. When we ask for a better room she said none were available and then proceeded to check later arrivals into better rooms. We ask for a restaurant recommendation but when we didn't let her make a reservation for us she became rude. After that almost anything I asked about I was told that she couldn't help me. Our room was very cold so we asked for heat but she told us if they gave us heat then the upstairs would get too hot. After much complaining the next day she finally turned on the heat for about an hour then shut it off again because people upstairs complained. The first night we had to take cold showers because the night clerk couldn't tell us how to operate the water temperature control. We had booked three nights but left after two because we couldn't take the cold cramped room or the lack of good service any more. They advertised free Wi Fi it didn't work. I have waited 5 months to write this review to make sure I hadn't changed my feelings about the Winchester. To be fair my daughter stayed at the Winchester a few weeks later without any negative incidents.

My husband and two adult children stayed at the Winchester for three nights. We picked this place due to the website. We thought it would be charming to "eat on Royal Dalton china" and eat with "Kristophe silverware". Jimmy and Juanita would serve us. None of the above was certainly true. The rooms were very tight like all London rooms...little space to put four people and their bags. We stayed in the basement. Although the weather outside was a nice 55-70degrees, we were very hot and stiffling with little way to open up the room to get a cool breeze. We did have a fan supplied to us that took hours to cool the room a bit. A small door to the outside patio and a flimsy lock supplied the ventilation. To be fair, two good things were: the location of the hotel and the very large bathroom with an excellent shower. The staff was very nice. I would recomment this hotel for its' value if you book ahead, but do not get the basement and do not depend upon the website.

After reading some of the reviews prior to our trip we were a little worried. We need not have, even though the room was quite small, it was clean and well serviced. The staff were very friendly and the breakfast was cooked freshly for us. The location was perfect, 5 mins walk to Victoria where we picked up the tube system. We were also able to walk to lots of restaurants and attractions. For the reasonable cost we thought we had our monies worth (for Central London).