Where is it?
Winchester! Home of Alfred the Great, with more history than any city can handle. Cathedral! Historic school! Actual Round Table of King Arthur, except probably not, but who cares. It’s the Eternal City, say some inhabitants, so, the English Rome then. Anyway, quite charming. And because it’s small, you can walk pretty well everywhere; the hotel is terrifically central.
Style
When you go in to the hotel from St Peter’s Street – ten mins from the railway station – the first thing that strikes you is the artificial rose bouquet, the portrait of the Queen in her younger days (this is, after all, the Winchester Royal) and the banner about being a wedding venue. Stop it right there. This is actually on an historic site, with bits going back to the fifteenth century (alas, they’re mostly seen by wedding guests on the dance floor upstairs under the beams, but you could ask) with nineteen of the rooms in the older, charming part of the hotel. It was a Benedictine convent at a time when Catholics had to lie low and a former bishop’s residence. But you don’t really get a feel of the history at the outset; rather, it’s a pleasant, welcoming place to stay.
Facilities
You can have a decent tea when you arrive in the bar or in the garden outside (they could make more of it, but it’d be good on a hot day). There are fine meeting rooms (again, in the older part of the hotel) and there’s a restaurant that doubles as a breakfast room. The oldest part of the hotel is upstairs under the roof, where wedding guests dance under the old beams in a lovely room with a great wooden door from which once you’d have lowered things down to the street; it may be Tudor, but old anyway.
Food & drink
The best bit is probably breakfast, which is a bit of a bunfight at weekends in a good way. It’s Middle England at ease here, with a buffet selection about which my only quibble is that the bacon is underdone rather than crispy. There are – hoorah – poached eggs on demand, an egg boiler and a citrus press for doing proper orange juice. On the walls of the buffet room there’s a written history of the hotel. The bar has a short menu of sandwiches and soups and there’s lunch and dinner in the main restaurant. It’s an easygoing menu of British plus mildly oriental dishes. I had a very good roast hake. The young waiters are friendly and obliging.
If you want to roam further afield, there’s an historic and tastefully atmospheric pub that serves English food a few minutes away from Winchester College – and there’s nothing like a mass of private school parents in a town to raise the bar when it comes to gastronomy. Think seagull eggs and English asparagus in season. Or there’s the Old Vine, off the High Street, which has organic wines, English sparkling wine and local beer, as well as dishes using local produce. Like I say, there’s a sophisticated eating-out market in town, as well as standard offerings. Also, there’s a good Rick Stein fish restaurant. The market on the High Street has street food; my favourite is the German sausage stall which gets its main ingredient from a butcher near Frankfurt. And if it’s good coffee you’re after, there’s a notable Coffee Lab in Little Minster Street which does fine cinnamon buns and artistic designs on your cappuccino.
Which room?
I came with children, which meant inter-connecting rooms looking onto the car park in the modern part of the hotel, which was, I may say, lovely and quiet. But if I were alone I’d do my best to get a room in the smaller, old part of the hotel, which is terrifically atmospheric, with wonky old floors, crooked doorways in one case, and steep stairs. There are four poster beds, if you like that kind of thing (silver, in the case of the honeymoon suite, which I’m not sure about), nice prints and views over the rooftops. I’d love to stay there. Suites are obviously more expensive but at least one of the old rooms is no more expensive than the modern sort. Rooms are comfortable and quiet, unobtrusive and relaxing. Usefully there’s an ironing board as well as the usual tea and Nespresso makers.
What to see and do
Where to start? The Cathedral, obviously, which is one of the largest in Europe, with its Gothic nave and fifteenth century altar screen and fabulous funerary inscriptions, including the grave of Jane Austen. If you want to join the congregation, a good option is Evensong at 5.30pm. There’s Winchester College – motto, Manners Makyth Man – which is 600 years old and very much worth a tour. And my favourite, the Hospital of St Cross and Almshouse of Noble Poverty, which is a manageable and lovely walk away through the water meadows and whose chapel is the finest example of transitional architecture – Romanesque to Gothic – in England. Exquisite.
And you want to know about shopping, don’t you? Well, Winchester has got all the usual – White Company, Gieves and Hawkes (remember the school), Laura Ashley, et al, but the crucial thing about it is the independent retailers. It is extraordinary how the retail ecology changes outside London; liberated from crushing rent and rates, you get fabulous independent shops. There’s a terrific haberdashers-cum-art shop, Closs and Hamblin, near the Town Hall, a very good stationers, Warren and Son (brilliant for Lamy pens), and nice shop for classy teas called Char with an extensive range of teas and pots. Even the WH Smith is excellent with roof beams on the upper floor. There are some fabulous second hand bookshops – the Deanery is excellent, near the Cathedral, and I could have spent my entire wage in the Oxfam bookshop on Parchment Street.
How to get there
The only civilised way of getting to Winchester is by train, about an hour from London Waterloo.
Best for
An easy-going, relaxed hotel with an interesting historic backstory for Londoners wanting to get away from the hubbub but still keen to be terrifically central. Remarkably, nearly all the employees seem to be locals. Excellent for an easy getaway for the weekend.
Details
Rooms from £89 per night. Winchesterroyalhotel.co
