A four-star hotel with singularly unpretentious style...
A sense of authentic friendliness permeates the Best Western Premier Blunsdon House Hotel, located near Swindon, deep in the Cotswolds region of England. Its roots can be traced back to the hotel's singular origins.
Before being a hotel, Blunsdon House was a hunting lodge and then a farm, which was bought by the Clifford family in the 1940s. In 1957, a major regional agricultural show was held in nearby Swindon. The show brought many people to the town, and a local hotelier asked the Cliffords if they could provide bed and breakfast accommodation in their 10-bedroom house. One thing led to another, and lodging eventually took over from farming at Blunsdon house. In the 1980s it became the first four-star hotel in the county.
The unpretentious, family-friendly charm that characterised the early years of Blunsdon House is still present to this day. This has to do with the fact that the Clifford family still owns and runs the hotel, and that the staff are locals. They are house-proud and know the region like the back of their hand. Many of them have been with the hotel since it first opened. They treat everyone that comes through the doors as part of their extended family.
The hotel's facilities, however, have come a long way since the early bed-and-breakfast days, where rooms only had washbasins and there was only one channel on the TV. Today it boasts over one hundred rooms discreetly housed in two buildings on the grounds. As a family friendly hotel, Blunsdon House caters for large and small families with a mix of family rooms and inter-connected rooms. Individually decorated and tastefully furnished, the rooms are spacious and comfortable. But they are never run of the mill; each room features a different dog puppet, a reminder of the hotel's bed-and-breakfast era, when guestrooms were decorated with family heirlooms and other memorabilia.
The grounds are a self-contained oasis, with two restaurants which attract many, connoisseurs of the county, two warm comfortable bars, a magnificent swimming pool with huge window cases on the countryside scenery, fitness centre, golf course and tennis and squash courts. The Georgian façade of the mansion is still visible, and the grounds are dotted with fine old trees that date from the Victoria era. Mulberry, Sequoia and Weeping ash trees all flourish. Keep an eye out for some California Redwoods, which were planted by Peter Clifford as a reminder of the birth of his first grandchild, after a trip to Yosemite National Park in the 1970s.
As if the hotel and grounds were not beautiful enough, Blunsdon house sits at the footsteps of the bucolic Cotswolds, a pastoral region made up of deep ravines (Cots), rolling high ground (wolds) and grassy limestone hills. Explore the steep-sided Malvern Hills with their wineries and cideries and the hilly North Cotswolds with their enchanting honey-hued villages with improbable names like Broadway and Chipping Campden.
No matter where the narrow lanes lined with drystone walls and thick daffodil verges lead you, a warm welcome awaits you at the Best Western Premier Blunsdon House Hotel.
| Best Western Premier Blunsdon House Hotel |
| Blunsdon, Swindon, England, GB, Swindon, England - SN26 7AS |
| Phone: +44 (0) 1793 721701 Fax: +44 (0) 1793 721056 |
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