Stoke Place

Firstly, this is a beautiful, although tired mansion house set in superb grounds and hosting a stunning lake designed by Capability Brown. The standard rooms are a bit tired. In fact all the rooms are a bit tired and could do with a spring clean. However, for the price I was more than happy to ignore this fact. I asked for an upgrade from a standard room and was given a Junior Suite by a warm and friendly receptionist named Sandra. The suite was huge with gorgeous views over the lake and grounds.... at no extra cost. The staff are very friendly and accommodating. I would definitely recommend a visit. It is immersed in nature and keeps one's soul connected to source. Thank you Stoke Place

Shabby room, shower flooded bathroom, with incredibly slippy tiled floor. Booked a double room was given a twin instead, bed was very uncomfortable. Garden room with no view of garden, for £170 a night, extremely overpriced won't be staying again!

Genuinely one of the worst experiences I've ever had at a Hotel. I am currently working at Pinewood studios sometimes late and thought i would 'treat' myself to a nice hotel. How wrong was I.. The first room i entered was dusty, dirty but i thought hey i'm tired - dropped my things and walked into the bathroom... The shower was soaking wet with hairs in it - obviously recently used. I asked to move rooms to which they apologised and gave me a second room... The second room (a suite) was literally a pig sty! Look at those pictures - unmade bed, petals everywhere on the floor, empty champagne bottles and dirty glasses left over from valentines day and some unpleasant stains which made me promptly leave again... Room 3 was dirty, cold as the radiators wouldn't work and had no hot water for the bath (no shower) not to mention an empty shower gel container. Old receipts in the drawers and crumbling walls. I had been outside all day working in the cold and at this point I couldn't be bothered to complain. It was 11pm - i was waking up at 6 for work and needed sleep. In the morning there was no one at reception to complain to. I'm happy they missed me. Thank god the wifi worked - ha! Not. I would like a full refund. Doubt they will give it. Not sure what else could go wrong really. Save your money. 4 stars apparently but i've stayed at 2 star Travelodges with cleaner more modern rooms.

We had our wedding here on Sunday 24th November. Luckily, we did the dry hire option and drafted in our own suppliers to deliver an exceptional day, but we had so many problems with the actual venue and its staff both in the build-up to the wedding and the day itself. Our first contact was with Tracy, who was experienced and knew what she was doing but unfortunately, she went on maternity leave and what followed was nothing short of a circus. In the following months we had around 4 different points of contact who each told us a different story every time we asked them questions about the venue and what we can execute with suppliers. Responses to questions took weeks which generated a lot of stress when trying to plan our wedding. As part of the dry hire, we were told that the only thing the venue will help with is putting the chairs out for the ceremony and turning the music on / off when the bride enters which is fine. A few days before the day itself the wedding planning manager told us she won’t be working on our day and it will be whoever is on the rota. The deal to put out the chairs wasn’t communicated to the duty manager and he refused to help, meaning the bride laid out the ceremony room herself plus clean up birthday cake from all the sofas and floor that had been left there from the previous party. The duty manager did a good job turning the music on and off but then decided to stick around to the end of the event and came very close to ruining the entire thing. Our caterer caught him red handed drinking our alcohol that we supplied for guests and throughout the course of the evening his behaviour became increasingly erratic, unpredictable and aggressive. I looked around at one point to see him shouting so aggressively in the face of one of the barmen, because the barmen put beers on the bar for people to grab. The duty manager was literally leaning into the face of the barman and looking to fight him over this “issue” even though the bar staff were bringing round beers all night. He started falsely accusing random guests of doing cocaine, which I can categorically say was incorrect. These guests were meeting the wider family for the first time, I can absolutely assure you they were not doing drugs at our wedding. The duty manager had also accused two girls of swearing at the receptionist. We haven’t been able to confirm whether this actually happened or not, if it did, we fully agree that this isn’t acceptable under any circumstances but his reaction to it is a sackable offence. He threatened to shut the evening down, turn off the music and call the police for starters, although fortunately a few level-headed adults were there to keep him in check long enough for the wedding to reach it’s planned end time. But then after most the guests had left, he followed the bride’s mother and bride’s sister to their room and made them both cry with his aggressive threats and abuse. He stood them outside their room for the best part of an hour loudly arguing with them and upsetting them deeply, on the day of their daughter’s / sister’s wedding, with no regard to how it was making them feel or even the other guests sleeping in the vicinity. He then banned them from the venue and threatened to call the police. I wasn’t aware of this happening, but bumped into him on the stairway and he gave me an ultimatum – either I get the guests to leave or he will call the police and have them arrested. Baring in mind this is on my wedding day, at around 12.30am and he wants me to do this. If he had an issue with this allegation against the guests who were rude to staff, there is a way to appropriately deal with it. Trying to shut down the entire wedding, making the mother and sister of the bride cry and stand them outside their hotel room humiliating them, banning them from the venue and calling the police is absolutely not the way under any circumstances. After it had all cooled down the sister even had the maturity to go and find him, take responsibility of other peoples actions and shake his hand in order to put an end to this situation. He swore at her and banned her from the venue again. She managed to record him arguing with his colleagues at this time, who were asking him what the hell is wrong with him and why is he always drunk on duty. When it got to the morning, the two girls who allegedly swore at the staff member were having breakfast and the duty manager walks in. He didn’t say a word to them. So after all of that, he didn’t even have the courage to approach them and deal with the situation, he just wanted to humiliate women and try and ruin other people’s night. The bride also bumped into Alison (another duty manager who we had contact with in the build up to the wedding) and she challenged the bridge saying she heard there were issues yesterday – the duty manager was asked to help out with the chairs hahahahaha!!! Nothing about any of his behaviour whatsoever. Despite the absolute SHAMBLES staff, we still managed to have a wonderful day, our suppliers delivered to the full and everyone enjoyed the day which we were delighted over. For anyone reading this considering having their wedding here – DON’T. There are plenty of other venues that are nicer, better kept and well managed. I can promise you none of this is exaggerated for effect or fabricated. It’s with a heavy heart I had to write this but it can’t go without consequence for the staff working there. These are people’s wedding days you are dealing with, it’s not a night down the pub! The duty manager should be identified by the management team and sacked immediately, with an apology on behalf of the venue sent to us.

Stayed here for work in February. Upon checking in I was advised that I had a reservation for 2 nights, however I had only booked in for one night. After about 5 minutes of searching for the confirmation email, it became apparent that I was in fact only booked in for 1 night, however the receptionist was trying to book me in under another guests name. After checking in and finding my room, initial thoughts was that the room looked nice and cosy. However after a couple of minutes I noticed there were quite a few dead flies around which I disposed off. I then went for dinner in the restaurant and when I returned the room was full of live flies. They were on the bed, walls, lampshades, floor and toilet. It was quite disturbing. I called reception and explained the situation to which they replied that there were no more rooms available. I then asked if they had some fly spray to deal with the issue, which they did not. Not long after they called me back and I moved to another room which was apparently an upgrade. Although this room was bigger, it was filthy with dead ladybirds, dust over the units, stains on the wall in the room and bathroom. Under the bed (which you could visibly see when in the bathroom), there was lumps of fluff and decomposing rose petals. God knows how long since that room had, had a good clean. Looking for a positive - the breakfast was very nice and the lady managing the breakfast sitting was lovely.