Please, please do not stay in the hotel if you are looking for a pleasant relxaing break of any sort!
We booked a one night stay at the Barton after looking around for other hotels for a break away out of London on the bank holiday weekend. We arrived at the Barton about 11am and the owner was kind enough to let us check into our room early - this was the only plus point of the hotel. On checking in I asked whether the hotel was full and was told it was nearly fully booked.
We then went to our room, which was fairly small and basic, and rather cheaply kitted out - we weren't expecting full luxury for £65 a night, but since arriving had seen a number of other hotels much cheaper than this, so were expecting something worth the money.
We then went out for the day, returning to the room at about 9pm, by which time there was a loud and very smoky karaoke party in the downstairs bar at the hotel - we had been told the piano bar of the hotel was in a separate building over the road, so this was rather a surprise. Anyway, we gave the hotel the benefit of the doubt and went to our room to see whether we could hear the music/ smell the smoke. As our room was on the first floor, it was no surprise the music could be heard in our room - loud enough to stop us from sleeping. However, worse than this was the overwhleming smell of cigarette smoke in our bedroom. Neither of us are smokers and we had asked for a non-smoking room.
I contacted the front desk to ask whether there was any possibilty of moving to another room and was told someone would be up to see us. When this girl arrived she just told us that she couldn't smell any smoke and that people had stayed in the room before and not complained. She then went down to see the manager to see if there was another room we could move to. She returned shortly and told us there was a twin room (as we are a couple, we had booked a double) which was on the same floor, but further away from the party, so it might not smell of smoke as much. We looked at the room, then asked if there were no other rooms - we could still hear the music from this room and had been told that it would go on until about midnight. We were taken down to see the manager, who came in to the room we were waiting in with a very aggressive, 'So what's the problem?!' I politely explained again the issues with the room and asked if there was anything she could do. The manager was extremely aggressive throughout the discussion and refused to apologise, instead making us feel like we had done something wrong. She denied that our room smelled of smoke, and even tried to make me go into the party to physically show me how few people were smoking! A little pointless as I had already been in when looking for someone to speak to and seen about 70% of the people in there smoking. Eventually we moved to the twin room, as we decided the cigarette smoke smell was worse than the noise at that stage. However, the noise got louder and continued until past 1.30am, keeping us awake the whole time. The twin room we were given was very dirty, and extremely cold. In the end, despite having paid for breakfast, we got up at 6.30am having hardly slept and returned to London.
Please, please, please do not stay in this hotel!!