These are unusual times, and the state of affairs can change quickly. Please check the latest travel guidance before making your journey. Note that our writers visited these hotels prior to the coronavirus pandemic.
Hotel’s will soon reopen (hopefully from May 17) and the UK will be in full spring bloom. To make the most of a staycation this year, consider a stay in a National Trust property that is also a hotel, from the Berkshire stately manor with a swimming pool that sparked off the Profumo affair to the former home of William the Conqueror’s illegitimate son. Expect ancient yew mazes, rose gardens, medieval fireplaces and Grade I-listed beds as well as gourmet cuisine, world-class service, and luxury spas. From Berkshire, York, and Buckinghamshire to Wales and Northern Ireland, here’s our pick of the best National Trust hotels in the UK.
Middlethorpe Hall & Spa, York, England
If walls could talk. This 17th-century pile created by a cutlery maker done good was also a one-time Victorian girls’ boarding school. In the Seventies it became Brummels nightclub – during which period partygoers would dance in the cellar and ballroom, and wander through the various velvet-draped rooms.
Today this Hampton Court Palace-inspired pad is posh but never pretentious, with a cracking spa and service as flawless as the manicured gardens. The rooms are crammed with character: smoke-scented fireplaces, rich wallpapers, William and Mary textiles, and the air ticking with grandfather clocks.
Dinner is served in the 1699 wood-paneled dining room; chef Ashley Binder’s six-course tasting menu with wine pairings features intriguing dishes. Afternoon tea in the drawing rooms and sundowner gin and tonics on the hotel’s terrace are also well worth it.
Read the full review: Middlethorpe Hall & Spa, York
• The best hotels in England
Hartwell House, Buckinghamshire, England
So old it was the home of one of William the Conqueror’s illegitimate sons (William Peverel). King John the ‘most evil monarch in history’ lived here before he succeeded his brother Richard the Lionheart. Louis XVIII also held court at Hartwell for five years while he was in exile. This latter chapter of the house’s history is delightfully shambolic: Louis turned the roof into a farm and cash-strapped accompanying émigrés opened shops in the outbuildings. More recently it was a girls’ finishing school.
Nowadays overnight guests come for the spa, the candle-lit dinners and the extraordinary original features – from the beautiful ceiling in the Georgian Morning Room that depicts the Four Seasons to the Jacobean staircase lined with knights. Louis XVIII’s queen – who died here of drink brought on by the misery of living in Britain – had them removed because their candlelit shadows frightened her as she stumbled, half-cut, to bed.
From ‘royal rooms’ to ‘attic rooms’, all the bedrooms are spacious, country-house style, and crammed with antiques.
Read the full review: Hartwell House & Spa, Buckinghamshire
• The best country house hotels in Britain
Cliveden House, Berkshire, England
Cliveden is home to the pool that triggered the Profumo affair (it was where John Profumo, the then Secretary of State for War, met Christine Keeler while she was frolicking in it topless with friends). Guests can sleep in a Grade I-listed bed, and have afternoon tea among medieval suits of armour and 16th-century tapestries that were a gift to the then owner for his role as a field marshall in the Battle of Blenheim. Cliveden has been associated with scandal since its life began in 1666 – as a place for the Duke of Buckingham to entertain his mistress.
Fatal duels have been fought here, the first female MP in history called it home, and Queen Victoria used to like coming to tea. The gardens are staggering, and include a rose garden, six-acre parterre with tulips, pansies and forget-me-nots, and a giant yew tree maze. The estate has a boathouse for jaunts along the Thames with champagne and homemade sandwiches.
Sipping on the fruity Profumo cocktails by the fire in the library before dining on the likes of local fallow deer with blackberry and chestnut jus and English rose veal tartare in the restaurant completes the experience.
Read the full review: Cliveden House, Berkshire
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Causeway Hotel, Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland
It has been the place to stay for trips to the Unesco Giant’s Causeway – a geological marvel made up of more than 40,000 interlocking basalt columns – for more than 150 years. When it opened in 1836, the then-manager William McNaul vowed that guests could depend on his ‘always keeping a well-stocked larder and being well supplied with the choicest wines and liquors’. A bedroom cost two shillings; dinner three shillings; keeping servants four shillings a day. Sitting-room access also cost extra and lighting a fire cost 60 pennies.
Credit:
Elaine Hill Photography/Elaine Hill Photography
Nowadays guests can enjoy a glass of sauvignon blanc or pint of Guinness in the Bar Lounge. The restaurant overlooks the ocean and serves North Atlantic cod and chips, Donegal salmon and Causeway seafood chowder. Recently-refurbished bedrooms are done out in fetching pastal, floral patterns and have sea views. Also expect patterned fabric wallpaper, antique chandeliers, period furnishings at every turn, and magnificent gilded doorways.
Rooms from £160 per night; thecausewayhotel.com
• The best hotels in Northern Ireland
Bodysgallen Hall and Spa, Llandudno, Wales
Legend has it that this medieval country house hotel – all pink sandstone, sunken gardens and ancient war towers – was built on the site of Codwallon I’s stronghold. He was the King of Gwynedd (present-day north-west Wales) around 500 AD.
A big attraction is Bodysgallen’s 13th-century tower, built as a lookout for Conwy Castle. The enircling views are enthralling. As you turn, first Conwy Castle, then Snowdonia, then the sea and Anglesey, then Great Orme catching the golden light, and lastly Llandudno –with the promise of its marvellous 19th century promenade – come into view.
There’s also a parterre garden filled with pungent herbs, a rose garden and topiary maze to enjoy. Inside there are plenty of cosy nooks for a whisky or afternoon tea, with crackling fires, original oil portraits, stained-glass windows and wood-clad walls.
The bedrooms are pretty and old-fashioned (think flouncy dressing tables, coronets above the beds, pleated lampshades, brass wall lights). The hotel boasts a 3 AA Rosette restaurant; chef gets his vegetables straight from the garden.
Read the full review: Bodysgallen Hall Hotel, Llandudno
• The best hotels in Wales
The Ickworth Hotel, Suffolk, England
A Georgian Italianate palace, former home to the Marquess of Bristol, now jointly owned by the National Trust. The building was created by Fredrick Augustus, 4th Earl of Bristol and the Bishop of Derry for his family to live in and to house his extensive art collection. Unfortunately he died, unexpectedly, in 1803 before seeing its completion. His family did though, and hosted many parties and guests, among them the King and Queen of France. Each of the 27 rooms in the main house is named after a regular guest during those halcyon days.
Over time, extensions and remodelling took place, and in 1956 the house and gardens passed to the Treasury before being granted to the National Trust. Under a lease agreement, the Hervey family continued to live in the East Wing – until the 7th Marquess had to sell it in 1998 after scandalously falling into debt.
Now the historic house hotel is surprisingly relaxed, think laidback luxury. Forget forbidding butlers. Muddy, borrowable wellies line the entrance. Period decor is lightened by modern pieces (and softened by clambering kids). Chests of well-loved toys line the stately corridors while open fires, newspapers and booze-bearing waiters await adults.
Fancy a game of tennis? Grab rackets and balls from a chest of scuffed sports kit, where you’ll find croquet mallets and shuttlecocks too. Pick up bikes in all sizes from an out-building, (do check the chains before you set off). The pool is full of floats, there’s an unassuming spa and staff are unfailingly obliging. Guests also get free access to the National Trust galleries and tours.
Read the full review: The Ickworth Hotel And Apartments, Suffolk
Contributions by Hattie Garlick & Sherelle Jacobs