The best luxury hotels in Bath for an indulgent stay when lockdown lifts
These are unusual times, and the state of affairs can change quickly. Please check the latest travel guidance before making your journey. As it stands, hotel stays may be allowed from May 17. Please note our writers visited these hotels prior to the coronavirus pandemic
In the 1700s, Bath was transformed into an elegant resort out of the local golden-hued Bath stone. Leading architects designed and built sweeping crescents and harmonious terraces, most of which are still visible today. The city as a whole has a graceful refinement to it, and much the same can be said of its finest hotels, many of which occupy Georgian premises. As well as indulgent hotels in the city, we have also highlighted below our favourite high-end places to stay a short drive away. If your romantic sojourn, spa getaway, historic break, walking weekend, and so forth, has been halted by the pandemic, you'll deserve a great British treat more than ever. So here's our guide to the best luxury hotels in Bath, and beyond, that are wonderful all year round.
This luxury hotel encompasses two townhouses in Bath's showpiece Georgian crescent. The elegant tone is set by curvaceous staircases overseen by classical busts, lounges with chandeliers and oil paintings, and extravagant suites with elaborate stuccoed ceilings. Hidden behind lies the hotel's lovely acre of pristine garden, with mature trees and shrubs, striking modern statuary and wooden tables and chairs on lawns much used for eating and drinking in fine weather – the hotel is famous for its very indulgent afternoon teas. Four further Georgian buildings at the back of the garden house the spa, a contemporary-styled bar and the pretty Dower House Restaurant.
The Gainsborough occupies a grandiose 1820s building that started life as a hospital, and then for many years was part of Bath's art college. It’s the only hotel in Bath with access to the city's natural thermal waters. The Romanesque Spa Village is impressive, with three substantial thermal pools (the largest is set under a glass-roofed atrium), as well as saunas and a steam room. Rooms and suites have an understated neo-Georgian look, with a grey-blue palette, period-style black furniture, and marble bathrooms. In three of them you can run a bath with the thermal waters. The level of service is simply the best of any Bath hotel, and the afternoon tea is really first-rate.
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This ivy-covered stone mansion from the 19th century overlooks nearly four acres of beautifully maintained grounds, which include expansive lawns and a kitchen garden. The hotel boasts a L'Occitane Spa, with treatment rooms and a fetching shop and nail bar overlooking the gardens. There's also a pleasant relaxation room, sauna, steam pod, and smart indoor swimming pool. Rooms have a soothing, traditional country-house look: even the cheapest Classic rooms are spacious and very comfy, though they don't have views of the garden. Delicious dinners with complex and accomplished dishes are fairly formal affairs overlooking the gardens.
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Avian-themed décor helps set the fun and creative tone in this stylish hotel near the centre of Bath. Expect crockery depicting birds in reception, a wall of stuffed birds set around a large tapestry of a cat in the lounge, a collection of kaleidoscopes, a display of oyster shells, Winston Churchill memorabilia and Victorian silhouette portraits. Excellent, good-value food, first-rate service and individually designed bedrooms – many with expansive views – are among the other draws. Food in Plate uses West Country ingredients where possible, with dishes such as tangy mackerel rillette and a superior chicken pie with a bird embossed into the pastry lid.
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This privately owned, contemporary-styled hotel is spread over four interconnected Georgian townhouses. It’s just up from the Assembly Rooms, with the showpiece Circus a two-minute walk away. Despite its 18th-century surroundings, it has a rather modern look. Rooms are individually decorated, successfully combining modern furnishings with elegant Georgian features (sash windows, marble fireplaces). The Olive Tree, the hotel's basement restaurant, offers some of the best, creative fine dining in Bath – which earned which has earned chef Chris Cleghorn Bath's only Michelin star. The slick Q bar offers a wide selection of cocktails and whiskies.
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This 166-room hotel fills much of the length of South Parade, a Grade I-Listed terrace of honey-coloured Bath Stone laid out in the 1740s by John Wood the Elder, the city's premier Georgian architect. The notably wide pavement in front of the terrace was designed for that classic Georgian pastime: promenading. Inside the hotel, the busy décor riffs playfully on the city's heritage: think Regency-style portraits with blotches of primary colours obscuring subjects' faces, animals dressed in military costumes, modern chandeliers, carpets decorated with butterflies, and historical maps of Bath on the wall. The atmosphere is trendier than most of Bath's other high-end hotels.
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Sitting at the top of a tree-lined drive, Lucknam Park is a refined 18th-century pile set in 500 acres of tranquil parkland. Inside, a dignified quiet presides, in rooms where portraits look out from gold wallpaper and in the library, stocked with crinkly 19th-century books. The bedrooms, spread between the main house and the courtyard, follow a traditional country house style, with quiet florals, mahogany and dashes of velvet, supplemented by digital radios. A gravel courtyard at the back – once the staff quarters – leads onto ponds and the modern brasserie and spa. The grounds feature tennis courts, an equestrian centre, an arboretum and a small, walled garden.
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Pig hotels are all about indulging in food and drink and this outpost near Bath is no exception. The country garden food and respectfully hedonistic atmosphere are what keep people returning to this Grade II-listed country house (with its own deer park) though the rooms are good-looking too. Three of them (in the Comfy Luxe category) have a seating area with wood burning stoves and a little garden, while the Apple Store and The Hide are the most private – detached, split-level cabins, the latter overlooking the deer park (they wander past the lounges at dusk). Massages and treatments are given in the Potting Shed spa. Walking maps are available from reception.
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A stylishly revivified hotel a short drive from Bath. At first glance, this gabled mansion and its 10 acres of well-kept grounds looks like a conventional country house hotel. But survey the lawns closely and you'll spot a life-size giraffe and outsize teddy bear covered in fake grass, while inside you’ll find Art Deco rooms, carriage clocks in reception, and shiny copper pots, dog figurines and framed Picture Post magazine covers in the lounges. Most striking of all is the restaurant, with its cluster of frilly chandeliers and arresting photographic portraits of locally based musician Peter Gabriel, taken in Bath in the 1970s. The appealing spa has a heated outdoor pool.
Contributions by Simon Horsford & Natalie Paris