Ickworth Hotel

We had the Matilda afternoon two at the Ickworth a couple of weeks ago. It's a nice environment (apart from one waitress who bizzarely lost her temper with some high chairs), but it was hugely over-priced. Quality was ok, but not as good as other, far cheaper places in the area. The children couldn't really make the connection with Matilda, it was all a bit tenuous. We did feedback privately, but unfortunately received no reply.

We had a lovely few days. Lovely hotel for families. Our room at first night was noisy with loud banging when flagged that tonreception with no problem they changed our room. I love those hotels. They are so brilliant for little ones. Kids club was great too. Very nice ladies. Nice staff. Only thing menu could be bigger or different choices through the week as if you stay few days there is not much to choose from.

Fantastic hotel! The last time we visited was in 2004, and this visit (4 and 5 May 2022) did not disappoint. The hotel staff are friendly and competent. Reception is well organised and goes the extra mile to ensure our satisfaction. Breakfast is included and very good, served in the conservatory. We enjoyed our lunch outside on the lawn, wanted the afternoon tea, but was told that we had to book it the previous day (we were not informed).

The quality of food served at lunch was very good. Accommodation is superb, and well worth it. We are staying in the room De Walden, and very happy with it. The gardens are immaculate and we really enjoyed walking the huge grounds. We took a tour of the adjacent Ickworth House with its long history and many artifacts, it is highly recommended. We enjoyed eating in the fine dining Fredericks restaurant tonight, and comparing the level of service and quality of food with the 2004 times, when the Frederick restaurant was well known for its exceptional excellence, graded at 3 AA rosettes, it still is fantastic quality and awesome service. We woll be visiting this hotel again for sure!

Really enjoyed our stay last weekend. Stayed in a lovely room overlooking the gardens. Huge National Trust grounds are excellent for walks and bike rides on the bicycles provided for free. Breakfast and dinner were both excellent, and staff were really friendly and helpful. Kids enjoyed the basement games room and swimming pool.

This place is listed as a four star hotel, it is pushing it as a 3 star. The best thing was the wonderful lady who I think is the manager or at least front of house. Very welcoming and helpful and the staff generally were very good. However the rooms are like staying in your old Granny's house. I appreciate its an old house but it certainly doesn't match up to what you expect a 4 star room to be.

The bed was so hard I may as well as have slept on the floor and had an awful nights sleep. The restaurant is awful, again hasn't been decorated for years and years and is a strange conservatory style with chairs that have seen better days. The menu is average, but the quality of the food was not good at all. You would get much better in your local pub no doubt.

I had the burger and which tasted like the cheapest meat they could find. My son had the pasta, considering it is meant to be a family hotel they tried to charge me 18! for a kids bowl of tomato pasta with some cucumber and tomato on the side. Absolutely appalling. I eat out with him regularly in London in restaurants of much better quality than that and I have never felt so ripped off.

There is no bar area, just a dusty old lounge. And then there is the swimming pool! the water was murky and smelt old, and when you get out there are only 2 unisex changing cubicles, no changing rooms. So I had to walk outside in the cold with my 3 year old, in our robes across the car park and in through the front entrance of the hotel, through reception and upstairs to our room. SO humiliating and not good to expect little kids with wet hair and costumes to do that, never mind us ladies. SO SO Bad.

Overall it looks nothing like the website and having stayed at many true luxury family hotels I can assure that this place is nowhere near luxury as is detailed in the title. You would be better off spending your money at Center Parcs or The Grove or so many other nice hotels in the UK that have got it right in providing a luxury experience and making children feel welcome. This is not the one!

Good service by staff. However there is no Sweet Chili Sauce available with luncheon or any Cakes - Chocolate, Carrot or Banana cake pieces with my pot of tea. Terrible for a luxury hotel. Stock up please. Abbey King.

The service and other aspects were pretty poor considering the cost and that it is meant to be luxury hotel. This was a special weekend for us that did not feel special. They know there are issues and the apologised and said they are setting up a new management course for staff due to this. That is great for future customers but there was no compensation for us. At least they could give us our money back for the 12 it cost us for three half sweetcorns?!

After reading a lot of reviews I was a bit worried if we had made the right choice to spend our Wedding Anniversary here but our one night stay was a wonderful experience as soon as we walked through the door. Everything was more than we could have expected. Accommodation, food, swimming pool and the spa were exceptional. So much detail went in to make our stay so memorable.

We booked based on a advert for a special menu deal. When we arrived we were told none of the dishes were available today and were given a completely different menu. However the staff were very helpful and apologetic and went backwards and forwards to the kitchen to sort out suitable alternatives and honoured the deal advertised. The food we ended up with was very good albeit not what we were expecting. Ickworth House is amazing.

I have been going to the hotel for several years but not to stay. It is in need of a refresh. The roast dinner was ok, the dessert was lovely but it wasn't worth the bill total and service wasn't worth almost 8 which they had already aided to the bill. Particularly as they forgot us for a long time between courses! Car parking area has needed improvements for a long time too

Excellent spa treatments and service. Delicious burger, fig and goat's cheese tart good (albeit incredibly light on fig!) but rest of food ordered (afternoon tea, soup, breakfast) sadly could have been much better.

Supposedly a luxury family hotel this hotel failed on many levels. Most of the time the public areas, especially the conservatory were far too cold.the food was the largest disappointment. There was a fixed menu which was acceptable but meant that the chef and waiting staff should have been familiar with it. We had breakfast with no eggs served one day and no black pudding another day.

A simple request pointing out these omissions ensured the items were brought but always after a wait and in silence, never an apology. No warmth from the dining room staff with the exception of the first night manager who put herself out to provide a heater for our table. The worst error was that I paid for our room and our family's room when we arrived.

Our son was paying for his room when I spotted him and pointed out that the payment had been made. No apology and a fuss to find out that the payment had been made. One evening we were shown to a table for 6 which had been cleaned and set, however children had obviously been there earlier as the floor was filthy with food and dangerously slippy mashed potato.

My shoes were caked with the potato. We had to request another table, no offer was made to move us to a clean table. On the other hand the treatments and beauticians were great, the children's facilities were good and plentiful, the swimming pool, lights, bikes, children's rooms were used and enjoyed. Beautiful setting and presumably suffering from staff shortages but no excuse for poor training. You can't charge the luxury prices and provide low standards.

Excellent place to stay; service in conservatory sometimes slower than expected. Food is delightful and recommend afternoon tea or cream tea. Even better if the next door Ickworth House is open (not when we visited). Plus if you like walks, there are some excellently signposted trails - we did the green trail (4.6km - more like 5km!).

Had a sparkling wine afternoon tea booked. Poor quality of service on arrival. Tea pot was covered in tea leaves and tea stains as they must of missed the pot when filling. Sandwiches were dry, no butter or jam for scones, when we had finished we was asked if we wanted jam, and then when we gave voucher she then asked if we wanted our sparkling wine, we left feeling very disappointed I would not recommend this place

We've just returned from a one night stay with our young daughter. I wanted to love the hotel SO MUCH, the stay was a treat to ourselves for my husbands birthday and to celebrate the end of a very tough year for our family. Some things were great - the en suites bath tub, the Four Little Bears Den staff and the massage I had were all wonderful. Some things were ok - the room was like a sauna - unbearable!

But the staff were able to unscrew the radiator cover and turn the radiator down, which was good. A lot of the child seats on the bikes were broken and therefore very unsafe but we eventually found one which wasn't broken and enjoyed exploring on the bikes. However. whilst we were staying there was a conference on at the hotel - not what we expected from an advertised 'family' hotel.

It meant there were a lot of men in suits in all the communal areas which made us feel uncomfortable being there with our daughter as we didn't want to disturb them. We treated ourselves to dinner at the hotel (not cheap!) and due to the conference we were put in the relaxed dining area as opposed to the proper restaurant. They'd made no effort to make this area nicer (no tablecloths etc.) And as we ate they were setting up for breakfast.

The flowers on the tables were half dead and the cheapest of cheap flowers. When paying 26 per main course and 35 for a bottle of wine, I'd expect to be eating somewhere a little nicer than at a table with pink highlighter stains on it from kids drawing whilst breakfast is set up around us along with flowers that look like they'd be brought from a petrol station a couple of weeks ago.

The food was very average, service was slow and by very young and timid waiting staff - all felt very average for a 1 course meal with a desert to share which cost well over 100. We've had such an awful past year and this was such a disappointing stay which was supposed to be our big treat and has left us feeling very let down.

We just got home after staying at the Ickworth for a couple of nights on a Toddler and you break. The reason I gave four stars was the staff were fantastic. Very friendly and professional, especially at the front desk. The food was lovely as were the drinks and decor. We enjoyed the surroundings and the pool and spa and our time. However the reason I didn't give 5 stars is my wife ordered a cheese omlette as she doesn't eat meat and there was a lump of ham inside. Whilst she wasn't that bothered, I imagine someone who doesn't eat pork due to religious reasons may be very upset to find that in their food. Lastly we had a power cut during the night and it took out everything.

Because you can't open the windows to cool down, we couldn't operate the air con, turn on the lights to see, charge our phones, make coffee when we awoke you get the idea, and had to wait until 9am to get it fixed. Of course that's not their fault, the 1 star reduction is more for the ham and for the fact they have also in the space of a few months raised the price of that promotion from 400 to 555. Which is around a 30% price increase.

Having taken a moment to moderate my feelings before writing this review I express this can score no higher than a 2. We stayed in the Lodge for a special family celebration. A party of 14 guests. Every single meal we ate from breakfasts to dinners had multiple errors with the orders when brought to the table, more often than not was barely warm. Food was mediocre at best. Roofs leaked and we were right beneath the drips. Tables were cramped. Dinners served before waiting ~4+ minutes for cutlery. No need to say much more. A very disappointed family left from a ruined special weekend

We had our dream wedding here (25/09/21) it is such an amazing venue. Intimate, relaxed place set in some beautiful gardens. Carol is such a great organiser, she certainly kept everything running smoothly. The. staff are so helpful, Luke helping with the bar and cleaning up. No job was a problem. It was great to have all our family and close friends all under one roof celebrating our day. I would definitely recommend

Lovely hotel and exceptional grounds. Nice to see some Suffolk wine and other local ingredients on the menu but the actual restaurant food for dinner fell somewhat short of our expectations for the prices charged, and service was a bit slow even though it didn't seem very busy. We do plan to return another time but probably for coffee and cake rather than dinner.

Great place to bring your dogs, staff very attentive to all your needs food superb

Fabulous building in a very scenic and tranquil setting. Visited for afternoon tea which was very pleasant although one of the sandwiches contained gristle. Wouldn't describe it as great value, but not extortionate either. Staff friendly and attentive.

No reservation had been made for lunch in their Conservatory. Not a problem for this hotel as they recommended a quiet room (Fredericks) for adults just down the corridor. This room was much more comfortable out of direct sunlight on a day with 28 Centigrade registering outside and a view of Ickworth Parkland too! Their lunch menu was such a. delight with us ordering an Octopus dish and a Kohlabi dish as mains.

The dessert menu was appetising too, and we decided to share a posh rice pudding dish. One serving was quite adequate for us two. The food was accompanied by two fruit juice mocktails - they were so refreshing! We will be returning very soon, for another lunch to remember!

Fabulous food and wine. relaxing place with beautiful gardens and walks. the staff was amazing. felt welcome and valued

This is like staying with your nan, they have every aspect covered. The rooms are old and quirky. If you want air conditioning this isn't the place for you. If you love historic, dramatic grandeur then you'll. love it. They pick the kindest staff with "let me sort that for you" attitude. The GM is super lovely, she brought poached chicken for our dog for dinner, due to us bagging a cancellation and getting an extra 2 nights.

The grounds are endless and you'd have to book in for 5 weeks to discover the place. We had glorious weather and it was bliss getting into the pool. They have a huge selection of bikes and the children were begging to go to the 4 Bears creche. Would I come back. YES.

Absolutely loved our family Supper Box; pheasant and coconut curry with coriander rice this week. High quality fresh ingredients with such delicate flavours. Loved the accompanying carrot salad, panko & coconut and, in particular, the chutney. All delicious and brought a touch of restaurant to home. A real treat to mark the weekend. All beautifully packaged too with clear instructions for reheating and serving. We'll definitely be ordering again.

I was given a GV for my birthday for a traditional afternoon tea for 2 in December last year. On 28th May Bank Holiday Monday, my husband and I visited Ickworth house and garden before heading to The Ickworth Hotel for our treat. We were seated at a nice table, offered chilled water and asked what hot drink we would like. The tea and coffee were brought followed by our afternoon tea.

Normal for my husband and gluten free for me. The food was lovely! My husband ate all his sandwiches, scones and cakes but by the time I got to my cakes, I was stuffed! I did eat 2 of the cakes. We were offered refills for the pots of tea and coffee. The staff were pleasant and helpful. We were well looked after. I would definitely go again! Thank you for a lovely afternoon.

NB. Only downside was that on hot days, air conditioners or fans would be welcome. It was very hot in the conservatory.

Beautiful Hotel in a Beautiful setting. We stayed in Amelie which was perfect, comfy beds, large bathroom with Elemis products. The only big let down was the evening meal. The food really isn’t anything special for the price, triple cooked chips were rock hard and had to be removed from my bill. Onglet was nice but nothing special for £20 odd. The choice is very limited.

The children’s menu however I thought was great. Dessert, again limited. Went for the chocolate olive oil cake which was just ok, the cake was dry and didn’t seem fresh. Not worth £9. Otherwise a lovely stay, breakfast was great, staff super friendly. Wouldn’t stay again due to the evening meal being so bad.

This hotel is superb. the food is outstanding the grounds are beautiful and the staff are all friendly