InfoBritain

 

Historic Accommodation In Southern England

We use the resources of the UK's leading hotel reservations service to bring you guest reviews, secure bookings and competitive rates for hotels throughout southern England.

As InfoBritain is a site for historical tourism we have created a special list of hotels with particular historic interest. Each hotel has been selected for its quality, and for the historic nature of its buildings, or for events that took place in or near the hotels. In the south of England you could stay in the hotel where Lady Jane Grey received the news that she was to be, briefly, queen of England - the New Inn Gloucester - or you could stay in a luxurious 12th century hotel in Chippenham where Oilver Cromwell used to go to relax - the Castle Inn.

 

Featured Hotels

 

 

The New Inn was built around 1430 by St Peter's Abbey for pilgrims who came to Gloucester Cathedral. The New Inn replaced that earlier building, hence its ironic name. The inn remained in the Abbey's possession until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539. It then became a private inn, and was known as the largest in the country.

In the summer of 1553 the New Inn saw history played out on its galleries. Edward VI had died, and to try and keep the English throne in Protestant hands seventeen year old Lady Jane Grey was persuaded to become queen. Jane was staying at the New Inn when the proclamation was made. The announcement of her succession was made from the New Inn gallery. Sadly Jane's reign only lasted seventeen days, before she was deposed by Mary Tudor and her supporters. Read more in the Later Tudors.

Later in the sixteenth century the New Inn's galleries held the audience for plays performed in the courtyard. Shakespeare could well have performed here in his days touring with the Lord Chamberlain's Men.

The New Inn continues as an inn, a restaurant, and as a venue for civil weddings.

The New Inn is in Northgate Street, Gloucester. Click here for more information, guest reviews,room availability and bookings.

 

Until 1894 the Old Railway Station Hotel was Petworth's railway station. The magnificent guest lounge was formerly the waiting room and has a 20 foot vaulted ceiling. The doors of the lounge open out onto the platform which is one of the venues for breakfast.

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Parts of the Spread Eagle Hotel in Midhurst, West Sussex, date to 1430. Elizabeth I is supposed to have stayed at the Spread Eagle, her stay commemorated in the name of the Queen's Room above the lounge.

Historical novelist Anya Seton used the Spread Eagle as a setting in her story The Green Darkness. In this story a young American woman relives a former life as a barmaid at an English sixteenth century inn.

The Spread Eagle continues as a working hotel, combining its history with modern facilities. Click here for more information, guest reviews,room availability and bookings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tylney Hall was built in 1700 on the Hampshire/Berkshire border. The hotel is close to Jane Austen's house at Chawton, and Jane Austen used many of the locations in this area in her books. For someone who enjoys the books of Jane Austen this would be a perfect place to stay.

Tylney Hall is also close to Stratfield Saye House, home of the Duke of Wellington, Basing House, and Highclere Castle.

 

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Cross Oaks Farmhouse, a 600 hundred year old farmhouse on the edge of the New Forest, Hampshire, sympathetically converted into a modern 4 star hotel.

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The George is a fifteenth century coaching inn set in the heart of Oxfordshire. Dorchester-on-Thames is central to many historic sites in Southern England. Oxford, Blenheim Palace, Benjamin Disraeli's house at Hughenden Manor, and the historic towns of the Cotswolds are close by.

The hotel combines the beauty of an historic building, with all the facilities of a modern hotel.
 
Each en-suite bedroom has its own individuality.

The attractiveness of this hotel has led to it being featured in a number of television programmes, including Midsomer Murders, Miss Marple, Poirot, and Tom Brown's Schooldays

 

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The Bay Tree in Burford is a highly rated three star hotel in a 16th century house in one of the best preserved Elizabethan towns in Britain.

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Why not hire a seventeenth century cottage, modernised to a luxury standard in the village of Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire. Rates are comparable to a four star hotel, and you get you own historic cottage with a lovely garden.

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The Five Feathers Hotel is a French Renaissance style chateau built at the entrance to Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild. Waddesdon was built to house, and to be, a work of art, with Five Feathers as part of the artistic scheme. Rothschild stored his eighteenth century art here, and today each of the eleven rooms at Five Feathers has unique pieces from the Waddesdon art collection.

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