Review of Danesfield House Hotel & Spa, by Graeme Harwood

Danesfield House Hotel & Spa is an enormous Gothic castle of a country house with 87 Bedrooms, set in 65 acres of gardens. What it’s primarily about, this siren Call of The Danesfield, is that mantra all estate agents are taught at birth: location,location,location.

It’s not that the hotel is only one hour from London, thirty minutes from Heatrow and five minutes from a very picturesque 18 hole golf course. It’s the siting of the hotel - spotted as long ago as the 8th-century as an up-and-coming area, when the Danes invested in a camp there (hence ‘Danesfield’). This has just got to be one of the loveliest places in England to put a hotel.

The Danesfield’s hill-top view is a fairytale in layers. Out of your leaded, baronial window from a bold, white Victorian Gothic Castle you look down over the intriguingly shaped dark greens of a topiary and maze, past the light green lawn lit with flowers, down to an intimate, lazy bend of the River Thames in which the village of Horley slumbers, offering only occasional chimney smoke as witness to life, before your gaze rises upwards and revives on a crowning backdrop, The Chiltern Hills, in full, pale green panorama.

The word ‘spa’ is inadequate to describe the best health centre I’ve seen in a hotel for years: proper 20m pool, sauna, steamroom, techno gym and enough posh treatments to cure Her Majesty of every known ailment. Unsurprisingly, it’s open to the general public as a very high ticket, members-only health club.

Hotel bedrooms are both cosy and spacious, best of all being the four-poster ones with views over The Thames. No point staying here without that view - and, predictably, the price supplement with it. The Grand Lounge is also somewhere I’d happily spend time again- a magnificent Gothic riot of wood panelling, lamps, flowers, sofas and stately log fire. This, internally is the ‘must photograph’ view and almost as good as The Grand River Garden. So endeth high praise for the Danesfield.

What I didn’t like about the hotel could be summarised in one sentence: an over-priced human factory where all and sundry go for a special occasion. The large car park at the entrance augurs a crowd and indeed there always seems to be at least one function going on - a convention, a wedding, a corporate do, even parties of American tourists.

With their flagship ‘haute cuisine’ restaurant, The Oak Room, the hotel seems to be saying: that was business, this is personal. And doing my best to ignore the wedding bash next door, I did at least feel like a cherished guest in an exclusive place. But not by the end of the meal. Waiters made guest appearances rather than someone always being on hand (where they doubling next door?); my cheese course was completely forgotten about; wife’s dessert arrived with the ice-cream base half-melted. Who passed that I wonder?

Generally, the cooking was workmanlike with flair trying to get through which is why the restaurant is ranked with a relatively modest 2 AA Rosettes. So why over-charge people with Michelin Star prices – starters averaging £14, mains £25 & desserts £8? Could it be that the hotel thinks its guests won’t know any better so make everything reassuringly expensive? Looks like it from the Bordeaux page in the wine list which launches into the subject from a humble point: ‘Bordeaux is both a city and the name of the wine’. Cue hefty markups on wine where the average price is around £35 and the cheapest bottle on offer at only £24.

The Danesfield has the tendency to over-puff itself. The hotel shield at the bottom of the driveway greets you with 5 stars on it, but it’s a 4 star hotel. Corridors appear to be lined with Old Master Paintings which turn out to be crude, assembly-line copies. One night B&B in a river view double is a considerable GBP 254, with a dinner bill waiting in the wings.

Now go back and re-read the first paragraph or the next sentence will sound a little strange. I can’t recommend strongly enough to you the experience of this hotel on a summer’s evening. Don’t, if it’s possible to get there, pass up the chance. The memory of dining and walking in that glorious Danesfield setting will long outlast any reviewer’s niggles, particularly as you aren’t being paid to notice them. I, for my sins, might well have to go back in disguise.