The White Hart is in the lovely town of Andover, midway between Stone Henge and Basingstoke on the A303. The Inn is run by the Marston's group, so you know there will be excellent food on offer, served by well trained staff.
Emily professionally checked me in and directed me to my room,
I was given Room 15 and my first impression of the room was spacious ! it also had a very large bathroom/shower room. Nice tea and coffee facilities with biscuits, and a complimentary bottle of Mineral Water which I thought was great. The flat screen TV was medium sized and it worked very well. The shower was hot and powerful, good quality bed and furniture. Room 15 is positioned seemingly directly over the bar and restaurant. This is a very busy place, so there was quite a lot of noise from downstairs, that did stop quickly after closing time.
My evening meal was very good, my breaded mushroom starter was perfect (see photo) my mixed grill was superb (see photo) and very good value for money at only £14-95. Breakfast was very good (see photo) served to me by Izabella from Poland, she is very proficient and really nice and welcoming, typical of the staff you get with Marstons. I will be staying here again because the food was so good and the people were so nice.

Richard Kaminski.

I really don’t know where to begin with these guys - I suppose on a negative - as I cannot think of one single positive thing to say about this place for as much as I have tried my hardest over the last few days to come up with at least one, but to no avail.

On arrival, we were taken to reception to check-in. We were given a piece of paper to sign, and said piece of paper had our address, phone numbers and card details on. The member of staff said “When you’ve signed this, just leave it on reception and I’ll pick it up and deal with it on my return”, on reception that I may point out is right by the main entrance for which any Tom, Dick or Harry could walk by and just help themselves to mine and my partners details. I’m sure there’s a Data Protection Act issue here!?

Once in the room the first thing I noticed here was that for a DOUBLE room only one towel was provided, ok not the end of the world we could share the first morning and ask the staff to provide a couple of fresh towels after that – we asked, nothing was done about it. So the second morning we shared the SAME towel again. We then asked again and on the third morning a SINGLE towel was provided. Brilliant!

We also ran out of toilet roll, as you can imagine this isn’t pleasant especially if you’re going to need it. Again we asked for some more, but unlike the towels this isn’t something we could just put up with and had to buy our own.

The room its self was basic and provided the basic required amenities, and I really like to have a good cup of coffee now and again without having to leave my room. However when going to fill the kettle I noticed that the inside was covered in lime scale and I would have much preferred to have drunk from the toilet – pre-flush.

We ordered tea there one night and me and my partner ordered steaks, mine medium rare and my partners well done – the food arrived quickly (A POSITIVE!!) but my partners came to the table blue. It was taken away and cooked a little more, after complaining, all whilst I’m waiting and my tea was getting cold, by time my partners food had arrived a second time, mine was luke-warm as was hers.

Whilst eating our tea there was an issue with the fire alarm that resulted in a really annoying and almost deafening constant beep that was constantly reset only to start again within a minute or so.

We were told on arrival, whilst the member of staff could be bothered to spare a single minute that breakfast was 0800-1000hrs – the first morning it was, although we were told off for sitting at the ‘wrong table’. It was edible, and filled me up (almost a positive there!), the second morning me and my partner chose to skip breakfast and stay in bed a bit longer (no issue), the third morning we went down for approximately 0940hrs to get told breakfast had finished at 0900hrs. One hour earlier than we had been advised, I couldn’t help but feel a little annoyed and ripped off as this was the morning I was most bothered about breakfast due to the 300 mile drive I had ahead. So when checking out, I thought it was only reasonable to have the cost of that particular morning’s breakfast reduced from the overall bill as we had been mislead and we still had to then go and purchase our breakfast from somewhere else.

From this point the member of staff became argumentative, almost aggressive and had serious attitude problem. I asked to speak to the manager who just conveniently had to be out of the building, when I asked how long he was going to be all I got was “I don’t know, you’ll just have to sit there and wait for him” – really, I have to sit around and wait for the manager? At almost £100 a night, this isn’t exactly how I anticipated being treated. When the manger did turn up, he did the right thing and reduced out bill accordingly – Well Done.

So overall, if none of the above is likely to bother you then you will really enjoy your stay. But for us, it was that bad that we had to cancel our next booking with them because neither of us could bear the thought of staying in this hotel again. In essence it has potentially ruined our new year, as most of the other hotels on that area are now full.

I used to live in the town and now visit occasionally for work. I have not had much luck recently. The Premier Inn is probably the best but I gave that a bad review recently because it was so awfully hot in the rooms. This time my main problem was that there was no heat in my room and given that my visit was mid-December this is not good!

I was offered a portable heater, but I was told this was in another room and the young girl claimed she could not get access until the occupier returned. From this I surmised that another guest was going to be dep[rivfed of what might be much needed heat for them. And did not this gilr have a pass key? Anyway, the heater never arrived. Fortunately, despite the time of year, the weather, whilst cold, was not freezing and so I survived.

The reception was never manned (except once, on my arrival); this is forgiveable in a small busy hotel (there were Christmas parties) where the lack of full time receptionists out of normal hours is acceptable, but there should be means of summoning assitance rather than having to run round to find busy bar or restaurant staff to help.

The lighting in the room was not good enough for anyone over 45 to read by - very gloomy.

My television only received BBC1 and BBC2 intermitently - much of the time the screen announced "Poor Signal" but the other channels were fine. Bizarrely, the TV also regularly swtiched itself off - three times in one half hour period between about 9:30 and 10:00pm.

Outside my room there was a flat roof with a large funnel emerging from the roof. I took this to be some kind of extractor device and this made a decidedly intrusive and constant noise. It stopped at 11 pm and started again at 6.30 am.

Cleanliness was dubious. There were a few bits of what looked like tinsel or confettii on the carpet and the waste bin in the bathroom had not been emptied from an earlier guest.

MY main issues that could so eaisly be put right were: no heat (shocking issue really in the height of winter and my guess is that this was not a recent problem, the radiator had the feel of one that had not worked for a long time); terrible lighting; poor TV performance; dubious cleaning. The noisey extractor was probably unavoidable but it still means I am unlilkey to try the place again.

I can forgive that this hotel is in a very old, creaky, rabbit-warren of a building which inevitably suffers from years of alteration and botching to provide modern facilties. But much more could be done to improve it. The windows are in very poor shape and let in drafts and suffer very badly with condensation. There may be planning problems with double galzing, I don't know, but I am most certain more could be done. Lighting could easily be improved and efforts should be made to ensure reception assitance can be eaisly summoned. These are not difficult things to achieve.

The room was cheap (I paid £57.50 through Late Rooms); but I would far rather pay a decent price and get a comfortable warm, clean, bright room.

Absolutely not recommended.

Stayed here last week. Pleasantly surprised on entering the building - the bar area and restaurant area look very snug and inviting and there were a few customers even though it was early. Room 1 is as far from the entrance as you can get. Lots of stairs up and down, twists and turns as you expect in such an old building. As I opened the door to my room I you couldn't miss the huge cobweb on the wall facing you but the cleaning staff had. Quite a large room containing just twin beds, a very small table and one chair. The available floor space was so great that much more could have been done to make the room more welcoming. The windows were filthy with black mould growing on all the woodwork. The ceiling in the shower was thick with black mould and the air vent looked like it had never been cleaned. The ceiling here is very low so this is only inches from your face when showering. Plenty of tea/coffee kit available but both the cups were still dirty from the previous tenant. The carpet was not just dirty it was filthy - large black marks all over - I will publish all of the photos but having a problem uploading right now. The TV did not work but with no phone in the room I wasn't going all the way back to reception to complain - the bed was very comfortable, plenty of pillows and the towels were lovely and thick. Really just a very poor cleaning regime let them down.