I stayed in May at the Bailiffscourt Hotel. I had a deluxe room, which included an open fire (not needed because of the weather though) and a four poster bed.

Good points of the hotel:

The service was friendly and efficient, reception service was particularly excellent

Food - Breakfast was faultless, the restaurant is not cheap. but the food is good so I have no complaints, and if you are staying you must eat in the restaurant at least once.

The rooms are very rustic, old feel, this is a hotel I can imagine would be good to stay in in winter as well as summer

Location is marvellous, by the sea but also near a couple of pubs and not far from Littlehampton if you want to venture out

The Spa we did not use, but it looked excellent

Bad points - .. Well there aren't really any bad points I can think of. This hotel is expensive, but you get what you pay for, and is it value for money? I think it is, there are plenty of hotels where you pay a lot, and the service and general quality does not match, here it does.

I was given a present of a one night stay for two at this hotel and spa to be taken on a Sunday only. The deal included bed (in a superior double room), breakfast ,dinner and a facial or massage for each of us. As we live over 50 miles away we decided to book the Saturday night as well as it was our anniversary weekend. The cost for the Saturday was £330 for the same as the above minus the facial or massage. When I reviewed the website I discovered that the Sunday Spa deal was £155.00!! which was an absolute bargain.

I must say that Bailiffs Court is a wonderful location. In the summer I can imagine it is idillic as there are lovely walks and also courtyards in which you can sit to eat or drink. All the staff were polite and helpful. The spa and swimming pool were exc ellent and again the staff were very helpful and polite.

The room was a traditional one and nicely furnished with a nice touch of a dresser with a tea set locked inside. There was a night turning service and the room was clean. Some of the public areas looked a bit tired but I guess this added to the charm.

The food was A La Carte and was delicious especially the sweets, but disappointingly the menu (which was not very extensive i.e. 7 choices of each course) was the same for both evenings. When we expressed our concern the head waitress made an excuse then asked what we would like. When we told her she said that it was too late as we were sitting down to eat!! Obviously had we known we could have ordered something earlier one assumes!

The one very disappointing thing about this hotel apart from the Saturday night price of £330 which I find difficult for them to justify was the price of the drinks at the bar. A dry martini and tonic was £9.50 and a large Bailey's (half a small balloon glass) was £16. Bearing in mind the only things we had to pay for apart from our room was drinks in the bar (each night, only one drink each), lunch (sandwiches) on both days and wine at dinner (two glasses on Saturday and a bottle on Sunday) our final bill was £547.00 which I consider extremely expensive and which we decided was the deciding factor not to return.

Hotels are always hit or miss. Read a few reviews about this place and seemed 50/50. Wanted to get a true blue english experience at an old style manor. From start to finish the whole experience was perfect. Reception friendly and cozy, escorted to our room by the porter. The communal areas had a fireplace and quiet place to sit on comfy chairs and sip a wine and play chess etc. Dinner was just great, service impeccable, probably the best service Ive had having been in the UK 5 months. Excellent breakfast menu the next morning and just wish my wife and I had brought our gear to hit the spa area but we will next time. Definitely going back....

We had booked three nights at Bailiffscourt between Christmas and New Year, having done the same at Ockenden Manor the year before and thoroughly enjoyed it. However Bailiffscourt was not the same experience.

We were told that our room would be available from 3.00 pm which was when we arrived. The Receptionist apologised but said that the room was 'being done as we speak' and suggested that we wait in one of miniature sitting areas of the hotel until it was ready. However the hotel was packed with people and having failed to find somewhere to sit in the main building we were taken over to the Spa area.

We were exhausted and dying to fall into bed to sleep, read, watch DVDs and generally start unwinding. We waited and an hour later my partner went down to the spa reception to ask if they would check the status of our room. Half an hour later we were collected, feeling somewhat underwhelmed by our introduction to the hotel. Our room was fine, if a bit small . No DVD player though...sigh...all those films I had saved myself for went back into the suitcase. The bathroom had seen better days and wasn't that clean (nasty 'spatter' on the paintwork by the loo brush: someone else's toothpaste/lip marks on the tooth mug: yucky grouting around the bath) and thick (I mean thick) dust at the back of the bedside table/lamp and the floor between the bed and table.

We walked over to the main building for dinner which wasn't too far as we were in the nearest cottage but when it rained, even a short distance wasn't much fun. The food was OK but nothing special (Chichester College of Catering is how I would describe it ): they tried hard but at £43 or £47 a head it was certainly not value for money or lip smackingly good - ditto the wine list.

We were out all of the following day with friends and returned in time to change and have dinner, which was the same experience as the night before but less waiting between courses because the dining room was quieter.

The following day we set our for a long walk along the coast and returned four hours or so later to find that our room hadn't been done. We wanted a sleep so I rang Reception, expressed surprise that our room hadn't been done and asked that we weren't disturbed by housekeeping when they eventually made it to our cottage. I was then told that you had to put in a request for 'early' cleaning as changeovers take precendence. There was nothing in our room to draw our attention to this although apparantly it's in the large folder of hotel information (so large that it was offputting!). We then made a 'do not disturb' sign, put it outside our door and fell into a deep sleep, when we were rudley awakened by the telephone. It was Reception, asking if we wanted our room cleaned!! I boggled at the ineptitude, was reasonably polite given the circumstances and reiterated my earlier conversation asking that we weren't disturbed: but we had been and by then housekeeping had arrived, talking loudly outside our door and thumping around upstairs and in and out. So we turned on the television and lay in a comatose state, staring blankly at the flickering screen until a power cut plunged the surrounding area into darkness. An hour and a half later there was still no light so we dressed and went over to the main building which was heaving with guests (or those who had arrived that afternoon trying to check out). They couldn't tell us when the power would be back on as it affected a stretch of the coast and nor were they sure if the kitchen would be able to provide supper. Eventually a member of staff said that if guests chose to go out for dinner they would be reimbursed but interestingly, given that a lot of the guests didn't know the area, they weren't helpful in suggesting where to eat ,other than Arundel, 15-20 minutes away. However we had a much better meal out than if we had stayed and when we returned we found the hotel still shrouded in darkness....

We were happy to leave but at a cost of approximately £1,200 for three days, three dinners and three breakfasts it was neither value for money nor a rewarding, relaxing experience.

Putney Pippi