My girlfriend and I recently stayed at Hintlesham Hall over a weekend with dinner and bed and breakfast included. We paid £300 for the stay and this included the a la carte dinner. On arrival we parked the car and checked in at 2pm on the Saturday. The staff make you feel so welcome, we were shown to our room after going to reception to give my car reg number and sign a form. (in case we left without paying I suppose). The room was large, had high ceilings and large sash windows facing the back gardens of the house. There was an en-suite bathroom with a sunken bath. We noticed on walking up the main staircase there were large cracks in the ceiling where work is seriously required (definitely cosmetically and maybe even structurely). This was rather alarming to see but I put it down to probably a historic roof leak or settlement. There is a comfortable if somewhat tired feel about the hotel and our room was no exception, though it was sparcely furnished and the bathroom would have done with being completely refurbished. (the masticking was black in areas and some of the marble tiles were cracked or wobbly). But the room was very warm which was just as well - it was completely freezing outside. Dinner was excellent. We ate in the intimate surroundings of the panelled dining room with dimmed lights and candles. The service was second to none but not stuck up, the waiters were extremely friendly, but not obsequious, always there if you needed them to be but not lurking at the time. The food was very good. I had a rare steak for instance than was cooked to perfection. The wine list is excellent, award winning and comprehensive, not cheap - but we drank the house white and red at £5.25 a glass, which was good value. What was not good value was the fact that the hotel it turns out CHARGED US £4.95 FOR A BOTTLE OF UNLABELLED WATER. During the meal we were asked if we would like some water and they poured us a couple of glases - which came up as a litre bottle of water on my final bill - but it was obviously just tap water as it was not labelled. This I think is disgraceful and they let themselves down by charging like this - it was a total rip off. I couldn't be bothered to kick up a fuss though when we paid the following day, I didn't want to spoil the feeling of the stay. After dinner we sat by the fire in the garden room and had a couple of drinks. UNBELIEVABLY a squat bearded man, who I now know is called Renee (who has worked there 8 years) came over and asked us if we would mind moving to allow some other guests to come and sit by the fire. My girlfirend said "Er...I don't think so,no,sorry". I had started to say this would be fine but she cut me off (quite rightly) and said, "why should we move?" We have just had dinner and the fire had basically gone out before we sat down and thrown a few logs on, why is someone elses money better than ours? We were absolutely AMAZED AT BEING ASKED TO MOVE - especially when elsewhere in the room there was plenty of space for two couples to sit down. Anyway, along came these two rather loud and gauche big bellied men, talking about money (perhaps they had asked Renee to make sure the fire seats were free for them and their wives, it wouldn't surprise me, who knows). Then their wives turned up and one of them at least had the grace to recognise that their men had just sort of barged into our space and despite my girlfriend saying it was fine to stay they insisted they go and sit elsewhere (a typically comedic English scene). They then proceeded to move to the other side of the room where they spoke in raised estuary english tones about money and property. A bit of a shame that such lovely surroundings were tainted by the wrong sort, but there you go.
Cooked breakfast in the morning in the main dining room was absolutely superb, balck pudding, the works, lovely. We read the papers in one of the drawing rooms and left feeling rather bloated at around 11am. All together, Hintlesham needs some cosmetic refurbishment but you cannot fault the staff or the food. One thing - before dinner I rang reception to have a shirt ironed as having taken it out of it packet new, without an iron in the room, it was really creased. A young girl came quickly and collected it and an older woman handed it back to me about 20 minutes later, which was fine. What was not fine was the cost involved on the bill the following day: £6 !!
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
