Best UK hotels 2025

Our 2025 hotel round-up features the best properties the Which? Travel undercover inspectors have visited and reviewed in the past 12 months. 

From seaside retreats to countryside boltholes and city boutiques, we stay at hundreds of UK hotels to bring you honest and impartial reviews you can trust: both good and bad. All of the hotels featured here were rated 4 out of 5 by our inspectors (we award very few five stars - see our rating system at the end of this article). And good doesn't necessarily mean expensive; prices for our best hotels start at £175 per night.

We completed stays at these hotels at the end of 2023 and during 2024. Prices are for a Saturday night (peak price) and correct at the time of publication. 

But if you're looking for chain hotel ratings, head over to our best UK hotels guide where we rate brands from Premier Inn to Travelodge and Hilton.

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North Yorkshire
Middleton Lodge

Score: 4 stars

Peak price: £305

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With a grand, tree-lined drive and Georgian stone buildings set amid a sprawling 200-acre estate, Middleton Lodge is a relaxing retreat. A forest spa sits at its heart and, beyond the thickets, an outdoor pool beckons. Although it’s serene, we have reservations about getting into the pool on a grizzly day in Yorkshire. These soon melt away as we slip into the welcoming balmy water. It’s difficult to believe we’re minutes from the A1 as we swap gentle laps for a dip in the toasty hot tub before reclining on fireside sofas. Access to the spa for up to 2.5 hours, costs £90pp. Treatments are additional (however a two-course dinner is included in the price).

Rooms: Our Coach House ‘comfy’ room is an idyllic terraced cottage with duck-egg blue sash windows and a door bordered by pink roses. Inside, exposed beams, handmade wooden furniture and a claw-foot freestanding bath continue the chic, country aesthetic. A tartan throw on the indulgent super-king bed and olive and cream wallpaper add homely touches to the neutrals elsewhere.

Food and drink: The Coach House’s menu is inspired by produce grown in the bountiful on-site walled garden – and is where the onions in our deliciously rich soup come from. Our tasty fresh spaghetti topped with bolognese and whipped (extremely garlicky) aioli uses locally sourced lamb. The continental breakfast is just as impressive, with steal-one-for- later tasty granola bars, sizeable buttery croissants made by an in-house pastry chef, and baps cooked to order.

Our verdict: A pricey Yorkshire pile, especially with add-ons, but the spa oasis and flavourful dinner are worth the splurge.

Reviewed: October 2024

Norfolk
The Gunton Arms

Score: 4

Peak price: £175

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‘How the other half live,’ the affable receptionist remarks  as she hangs up the phone. A guest is planning to drop in for lunch in his helicopter. Set within a thousand-acre deer park near Cromer, the Gunton Arms is a traditional gastropub with rooms – with a difference. Owner Ivor Braka, a rock ‘n’ roll Chelsea art dealer, has hung pieces from his provocative collection (which include works by Damien Hirst and Lucian Freud) in every bohemian cubbyhole. Yet, on our visit, rugbywatching locals outnumber extravagant flying visitors.

Rooms: Our room in the coach house is an elegant jumble of country-house fabrics and vintage lampshades. There’s a free-standing bath and twin sinks in the huge grey-marble-tiled bathroom, with a range of local toiletries. The cheapest rooms (£135) in the main house are snapped up months in advance.

Food and drink: Chef Stuart Tattersall cooks succulent, locally sourced steaks on the open fire under the fossilised skull of a 10,000-year-old elk. It’s not something you see every day. Neither are you likely to often eat a first-class full English breakfast under the neon glare of Tracey Emin’s illuminated signs, with a giant red stag peering through the window.

Our verdict: Braka could have hidden his art away, but his collection – like his unpretentious inn – is accessible to all. A decadent feast for the eyes. 

Reviewed: May 2024

Kent
The George in Rye

Score: 4

Peak price: £248

Check rates for The George in Rye at Booking.com

If you didn’t know The George was almost destroyed by fire in 2019, you might wonder how the owners got away with such a complete, rip-it-up-and-start-again refurb. Where’s the musty smell you normally get in 16th-century coaching inns? While there are still oak beams and an original fire place in The Dragon Bar, the smart wood panels and end-grain flooring look like they were sawn yesterday. The modern art and statement décor – a sailcloth hanging on the dining room wall, bold red paintings – should be an affront to this venerable old Rye institution, but instead it’s like a stylish new suit on an old friend.

Rooms: All the 41 rooms have their own personality, even the new ones in an annex by the courtyard. For couples it’s worth paying the £50 extra for a Classic – rather than Cosy – room. The latter only just squeeze in a bed (although they still have a bath as well as shower). Superior Rooms are £50 more than Classic and for that you get a roll-top bath and even more space.

Food and drink: The fish stew at dinner is rich with garlic and cream, giving it a lush, generous flavour and silky texture. At breakfast, the eggs with smashed avocado have the perfect amount of chilli for first thing in the morning – a gentle nudge rather than a kick.

Our verdict: A hotel as good as this makes a trip to charming Rye even more appealing. 

Reviewed: May 2024

Somerset
At the Chapel

Score: 4

Peak price: £175

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Built as a chapel in the 17th century, this Grade II-listed restaurant with rooms has also been a congregational church, a silk house and a recording studio in its former lives. Sharing the space with a bakery, wine store and clubroom on Bruton’s historic high street, At the Chapel is a popular hangout for locals, too. If time allows, visit Hauser & Wirth Somerset (free), a contemporary art gallery and garden nearby.

Rooms: Simple and stylish with light wooden furniture and black-painted floorboards, our dog-friendly Chapel Room (room #7) had a huge marble en suite with walk-in shower and freestanding bath. A poster of Marianne Faithfull and Mick Jagger adorns the cool white walls. It felt incredibly tranquil, but light sleepers take note: nearby St Mary’s Church bells chime every 15 minutes.

Food & drink: Freshly baked croissants are delivered to your bedroom door in the morning (jam is in the fridge), but you can also enjoy a full English (£15) or shakshuka (£12) in the former chapel restaurant. In the evenings, it serves sourdough pizza (from £8) and pricier mains, too. Pews have been replaced by long, solid wood tables and green leather tub chairs, and a bar now stands in the altar spot. Double-height arched windows, however, remain untouched, letting in ecclesiastical beams of natural light.

Our verdict: Divine accommodation and a heavenly dining room

Reviewed: November 2023

Norfolk
Cley Windmill

Score: 4

Peak price: £240

Check rates at the Cley Windmill with Booking.com

With its whitewashed wooden sails rising from the reedbed, Cley Windmill is a picture of pastoral perfection. Boats gently put-put past on the River Glaven, intermittently disappearing from view as they meander through the marshes and out to sea. You can watch it all from the wooden balcony that clings to the mill’s brick and flint tower. Or simply sink into a leather chair in the tiny lounge after a hard day of birdwatching or picnicking on the nearby shingle beach.

Rooms: While most rooms are at ground level, three occupy the tower, getting gradually narrower and more exhilarating as you ascend the wooden staircase. The top-floor Wheel Room is only for the most adventurous (and those who can still scale a ladder to perform their late-night ablutions). We tried the Stone Room directly below with its high ceiling, glaring gargoyles and oak beams that once supported the giant millstones. The shower room was a squeeze, but access to our own section of balcony more than compensated.

Food and drink: Fruit salad, yoghurt and mini pastries, followed by cooked-to-order options are served in the base of the tower. Order the night before for fish from the village smokehouse. Our kedgeree, with hunks of flaky haddock, was delicately spiced and deliciously creamy.

Our verdict: An intimate stay in a north Norfolk icon with unrivalled views.

Reviewed: November 2023

West Sussex
The Old Railway Station

Score: 4

Peak price: £241

Check rates at the Old Railway Station with Booking.com

Rail travel wasn’t always such a slog. The Mid Sussex Railway, which operated until the 1950s, was a rural single-track line that never got overcrowded. Now Petworth’s old station building, set within the South Downs National Park, has been turned into an atmospheric B&B. We felt like giddy extras in a Wes Anderson film from the moment we checked in at the old ticket office. 

Rooms: More-spacious rooms are available in the main building, but we couldn’t resist the chance to sleep in a converted Edwardian Pullman carriage. Our mahogany shuttered windows overlooked the old railway track – now a lush garden filled with birdsong. Original inlay and a brass luggage rack detract from a few rough edges (the hot tap was scalding, while the loo roll holder came loose in our hands). Note that no children under 10 are allowed to stay the night. 

Food and drink: Breakfast can be taken on the platform or in the airy, wood-panelled waiting room chock-a-block with railway memorabilia – from framed photos of the station in its heyday to a model of the last steam engine to pass through. Choose between a well-cooked full English or a continental selection of fresh fruit, yoghurt and cheese. Wines, locally brewed beers and a three-tiered afternoon tea (with 24 hours’ advance notice) are also available.

Our verdict: A unique, once-in-a-lifetime stay so authentic that you will swear you hear the whistle of a locomotive. Fabulous fun. 

Reviewed: November 2023

How we review hotels

Unlike all other national UK travel magazines and newspaper travel sections, Which? Travel never accepts freebies. We pay wherever we stay.

All our hotel inspections take place anonymously. We book a standard double room online, just as you would, and we sample the hotel’s facilities, just as you would. We never let on that we are from Which?

That means no special treatment, no reviewer upgrades and no opportunity for the hotel to influence our verdict.

And no matter how badly the hotel fares, we always publish the review, warts and all.

Our hotel ratings

We use an overall star rating for the hotel based on what we think you should expect for the type of accommodation (B&B, luxury hotel etc) and price.

All our ratings strictly adhere to the following criteria:

• 0 stars – A dreadful hotel. We would not recommend staying here.
• 1 star – A sub-standard hotel we think is well below average in its category.
• 2 stars – An adequate hotel we think has room for improvement.
• 3 stars – A solid hotel that meets our expectations.
• 4 stars – An excellent hotel we think is above average in its category.
• 5 stars – An exceptional hotel we think is among the best of its type.

All of these hotel reviews first appeared in Which? Travel

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