We'd initially booked the Quays Room - positioned as ”executive plus” on the website. Making the usual allowances for the building being old, this was a horrible room. The carpet looked like it needed a deep, deep clean; the ceiling had massive cracks, but the real kicker was the windows. The website for the hotel says: ”Located on the first floor of the manor house, this room offers views of the roof top terrace.” Does it, though? Or does one window look out onto a small area surrounded by walls on all four sides? Kind of an accidental void caused by the layout, rather than the sort of thing you'd expect from a ”roof terrace”. As a side note, you could gain access to this - ahem - terrace via an unlocked door in the corridor, which means that literally anyone could, should they choose, pitch up outside your bedroom window. Hold on, though - it's a dual aspect room. The second window looks out on a scene so grim they've permanently boarded it up with wooden slats, which you can fiddle with and squint through to see some more roofs. Absolutely understand that not every room can look out onto the Gloucestershire coutryside, but if you're booking a room pitched as being not merely executive, but executive plus, and priced accordingly, you don't expect to wind up in a space that would have been considered a bit much for the First Mrs Rochester. We elected to change rooms - paying a whack extra for a room above the spa. Like the Quays, this also wasn't worth the price being asked, but we rationalised that the additional £40 a night was a surcharge in order to not be spending time in the miserable Executive Plus level. The spa side of the hotel is better - it felt a lot cleaner, the rooms are currently being renovated and upgraded (ominous that a management response here says they're only overhauling 20 of their bedrooms, as this implies the Tumbledown Manor side are going to be left untouched.) The walk-in shower is brilliant, but feel sorry for the cleaning staff as the floor hasn't been laid properly so it doesn't quite drain properly and must be a faff to clean. The rooms further up the corridor appear to have actual, proper balconies - ours didn't, as the pool was beneath us and for some reason they'd decided we weren't allowed to get onto the terrace outside our room. We had a bit of a view across the garden to the trees, although much of it was of the green roof of the pool. You can't control the temperature of the room at all - the first night it was way too hot, but there wasn't even an off switch for the heated towel rail. We opened the windows and just about made the room bearable. The common areas of the hotel had radiators blasting out at high levels - maybe something was broken as a lot of doors were propped open the next, more bearable, day (including external doors, which was cooling but interesting from a security perspective.) Ironically, this part of the hotel has an actual roof terrace, with seating and views, which would
102 Reviews