Closed Deans Place Country Hotel

Just everything about Deans Place is outstanding, the hotel, the staff, the location and the breakfast is just off the chart fantastic, highly recommend a stay and a walk around this beautiful village.

Went for afternoon tea on the second day of opening and having been to the hotel many times over the years I couldn’t wait to see inside. It has been done beautifully, we sat in the orangery for our afternoon tea and the room is lovely with hand painted vines on the walls and ceiling. The afternoon tea was £35 each and it was the best afternoon tea I’ve ever had. Everything was very fresh, the sausage roll was absolutely delicious and the scones were amazing. The service was also excellent. If everything stays like this it will be a must go to hotel and I can’t wait to visit again.

We were very excited to stay at the Alfriston as we know the Signet groups other hotels like Elcott park (which we love) and have stayed in the town of Alfriston several times before. The new hotel looks very nice indeed and having a spa and pool is a big plus for the town. However, we found that all of the staff seemed really rather inexperienced and although I sympathise having worked in the service industry, we felt as if our whole stay we were on some training course or soft launch for the staff. Appreciate everyone must learn but our whole 2 night stay cost us more than £1200 all in (not including trains or taxis). So feel a little frustrated that we were paying 5 star prices for barely 3 star service. Also didn’t help I had a glass of wine poured down my front by a waiter 5 minutes after sitting down in the bar, then instead of comping the drink just brought us another and charged us in full, (again feel this was to not attract attention of managers). The food was as ever fantastic, everything cooked wonderfully but I don’t think there was a single meal we had that took less than 50 mins to arrive and we would have to constantly request things twice. We were asked on arrival if we wanted to order a Sunday paper which we would be billed for and we asked for the FT Weekend for the supplements etc, needless to say we didn’t get the paper and then received the standard FT (not so interesting) on Monday morning as we were leaving and were charged £5. The rooms were very nice again, but the suite we selected (which is the 3rd largest in the hotel and near £400 p/n) was less of a suite with a modest size bedroom with a small sofa at the end of the bed and really only had an en-suite with a semi functioning tv. Versus a living area, bedroom and bathroom as is it’s definition. It was also right above the kitchen so the ventilators and kitchen staff could be heard late into the evening and very early in the morning. We were both excited to use the spa and called ahead to check they were all running which we were told they were. Unfortunately upon arrival we were told the sauna was not functioning we was a big draw for us, we then asked for a tour of the spa, which was declined as there were guests using the facilities, fine, but when we finally used the steam rooms, relaxation room and pool we had about 4 tours of other guests which we had been refused. Drinks by the pool were also not really that great, as you had to walk through the whole hotel to get to the bar and bring them back. We were told they hadn’t yet worked out a system for pool ordering and would be at some stage. Again not the end of the world but took away from the experience. This isn’t a bad review as nothing truly awful happened and the staff were very nice but I think that good hotels are great due to the service and experience of the staff which wasn’t really there aside from once or two members; which for the price we paid doesn’t really match up. A shame really as t