About our hospitality

What we offer has the unique stamp of us and our different, but complementary personalities, abilities and skills. Tom takes the front-of-house role for arrivals, the service of breakfast and dinner, and departures. Roy’s unchallenged domain is the kitchen, although when the pressures of dinner preparations allow, he enjoys meeting and talking to guests. Our team of a dozen part-time staff are proud of their role, enjoy their work, and are fairly rewarded, so we do not add service, or accept tips.

We are hands-on proprietors and rarely away, except when business demands or the need for a few days off becomes overwhelming. Our winter closure (mid-January to mid-March) is taken up with maintenance and improvement projects, and allows for a holiday together.

Over the years we have got a good feel for what we do best, what brings guests back and earns their recommendations. To a great extent, this is down to attracting those who enjoy staying in a small hotel, appreciate personal hospitality and a degree of engagement with the proprietors.

We try to be upfront about the limitations of our energies: providing dinner confines Roy to the kitchen for 12 hours on average, and that is once breakfast is over, linen placed in the bedrooms for the housekeeping staff and he has helped Tom with the shopping and laundry and planned the evening's menu. On dinner nights, neither of us get to bed until past midnight, and it is not many hours before the alarm is summonsing us to get ready to serve breakfast.

In our 2009 closure, the desk in Rm 7 was replaced with a dressing table and a new wall-mounted TV installed. The cupboard in the adjacent hallway was also replaced.Guests who book well in advance can usually have dinner on the evenings of their choice, irrespective of the day of the week, however as the diary fills we designate non-cooking days. These are essential to cope with legal, financial, administrative and other demands such a business demands, and allow us a bit of a break.

Guests from Yorkshire who have stayed regularly over 12 years (their son lives in the town) remarked that we never seem to stop spending money or working to improve what we offer. Our motivation is not what the business might justify to a financial investor. It is to offer what we feel proud to provide and would wish to experience ourselves.

Part of our style is to get and use guests’ and diners’ names, and unless it will offend, we use your first name. Even with a large group and full restaurant, Tom can usually can remember everyone’s name.

Each winter we write personalised Christmas messages to regular and new guests, and use the opportunity to send an update on Lloyds and the tariff for the coming year. We respect requests not to be on this mailing list.

In the 19th century, the hotel stretched further down the street (this illustration was reproduced for our 1997 Christmas card, click here for the complete collection of cards). is an inscription on one of our basement doors, by Daisy Foot, probably a maid, dated 5th September 1875. An advert from around this period, which we have on display in our sitting room, declares that the hotel ‘Boots’ met all trains, and there were 22 bedrooms, each with a coal fire. Each winter we write personalised Christmas messages to regular and new guests, and use the opportunity to send an update on Lloyds and the tariff for the coming year. We respect requests not to be on this mailing list.