If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (GBP166.67), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
It may be called Boys Hall, but this 17th-century manor house five minutes from Ashford International train station has reached peak maturity. There are sophisticated Kentish delights to be devoured in its timber-framed restaurant, nine gorgeous grown-up bedrooms, an oak-panelled pub, a wild country garden and, if you still weren’t convinced, a very fetching beard of green on its quintessentially English façade.
11am (late check-outs until 1pm can be purchased for an extra £60, subject to availability). Earliest check-in, 3pm.
Prices
Double rooms from £200.00, including tax at 20 per cent.
More details
Rates usually include breakfast, which involves homemade granola, sourdough toast, pastries, fresh fruit, and Boys Hall honey.
Also
The restaurant and ground-floor spaces are wheelchair-friendly, but unfortunately no rooms have disabled access due to the age of the building.
At the hotel
Restaurant, pub, terrace, wild country garden, and sunken lawn. In rooms: Super-king-size beds, pure cotton bedlinen, free tea, coffee and water, a Roberts radio and earplugs (though every effort has been made to reduce noise in rooms, sometimes it does travel along the 17th-century walls).
Our favourite rooms
Boys Hall’s storied past bulges out of the walls and oak-timbered ceilings of its rich, textured rooms. Ancient oak furniture dominates but not stuffily, and details such as mullion windows and four-poster beds will have you pining to return again to try them all. As for a favourite, the Franklin is in one of the most original parts of the house and sits above the pub – so is suitable if, like us, you’ll be propping up the bar until closing. The Romney might just take first prize for its shadowy history: it was here that a smuggler’s secret hatch and pulley system was found, leading down to the remains of two tunnels in the cellar.
Packing tips
Bring an appetite.
Also
The hotel can arrange a mobile therapist who’ll visit your room to provide a range of treatments. Pre-booking is required.
Children
Despite the name, Boys Hall is aimed primarily at adults. Children are welcome to stay but the hotel makes no additional provision for them.
Sustainability efforts
Boys Hall is going to great lengths within the confines of a 17th-century manor house to minimise its impact on the environment. Needless to say, there are no plastic bottles or straws in use. The restaurant’s menu cleverly minimises waste – any collected is returned to the kitchen’s farm suppliers (all within a 20-mile radius). Bath products feature zero microplastics and bath salts are natural. As to the build, there’s a biomass boiler system and superior roof insulation that improves efficiency, and the car park and public areas have been built from materials that are sympathetic to tree roots. The gorgeous gardens have been planted with wild flowers to encourage biodiversity, and the hotel takes part in a scheme that is replanting native Kentish trees in the surrounding area. It receives an appreciative thumbs up from us.
In winter, get close (but not too close) to the walk-in fireplace. In the summer, plonk yourself outside on the patio.
Dress Code
Boys Hall’s parade of former residents include both smugglers and landed aristocracy, so why not be restrained with just a touch of naughtiness?
Hotel restaurant
Boys Hall really is centred on the restaurant, with its tall ceiling, magnificent reclaimed beams, giant fireplace and glass walls that overlook the patio and gardens, from which many of the ingredients in the kitchen are sourced. Chef Charlie Dilworth and his team cook over flame and coal using an asado-style grill they’ve named Jolene. And there may not be a better champion of Kentish cuisine in the whole county. Start the day with the man-sized Boys big English, fresh fruits or homemade granola with the estate’s honey. Be careful not to overstuff yourself because the lunch and dinner menu features dishes such as grilled Romney Marsh lamb with tomato fondue, rosemary potato, pickled morels and tarragon; Rare Breeds pork t-bone with Kent apple cider; crispy polenta with halloumi, confit fennel and spring vegetables; and steak with bone-marrow peppercorn sauce. And to not wash it down with a sparkling English wine from Tenterden or Canterbury would be, well, just rude.
Hotel bar
The Boys Hall pub is a drinking den for the ages. Like a well-aged single malt – or the oak panels that line the walls here – its charm and character has only improved over the years. Naturally, you’ll find local ales on cask, as well as superbly mixed cocktails and a great selection of wines, many of them of the English (specifically Kentish) variety.
Last orders
The restaurant is open Wednesday to Saturday, with lunch served noon–3pm and dinner 6pm–9pm. Sunday roasts are served between noon and 4.30pm. The pub is open from 4pm on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and from noon on weekends.
Room service
There’s no room service menu but drinks and snacks will be happily brought to you.
Boys Hall is a 17th-century manor house with a restaurant and rooms set in Ashford, Kent.
Planes
London Gatwick is the nearest airport, about an hour’s drive from the hotel. London Heathrow should take about one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half hours by car, depending on traffic on the M25. Alternatively, take a train from Heathrow to Paddington, then a Tube to St Pancras International – the station with a direct rail line to Ashford, Kent. Airport transfers can be arranged by the hotel.
Trains
Ashford International is the nearest station, just a five-minute cab ride away. Eurostar trains no longer stop here, but you’re only 45 minutes from London St Pancras on this line. The hotel can arrange a transfer from the train station.
Automobiles
There are 40 parking spaces at Boys Hall, allocated on a first come, first served basis.
Worth getting out of bed for
Top priority is to stroll through Boys Hall’s wondrously wild garden, a leafy enclave seemingly airlifted into comparatively homogeneous Ashford. It’s so lovely, we’d recommend getting your hands dirty on one of the hotel’s workshops, such as the wild classroom where you can hone your fire-making and outdoor-cooking skills. There are ceramics, terrarium and bouquet-making sessions available, too. A 10-minute drive away is the Kent Cookery School as well as the Green Farm spa, whose wellness treatments draw on the surrounding woodland and meadows. You’re also within driving distance of seven local vineyards, known as the Wine Garden of England, so a tour of Biddenden, Simpsons, Gusbourne et al could conceivably be undertaken in one (fairly boozy) day. Then, there’s nearby Canterbury for cathedrals (well, one famous one, anyway) and punting; Howletts Wildlife Park, with tigers, gorillas and rhinos; and the coast – arty Folkestone is 20 minutes away; bleak-yet-oddly-beautiful Dungeness is 45 minutes; and quiet, cute Deal is a 50-minute drive from the hotel.
Local restaurants
The fanciest nearby feast has to be the Michelin-starred Hide & Fox, serving a five- or eight-course tasting menu with the likes of Kentish marsh lamb with confit garlic and smoked anchovy; Brixham crab with grapefruit, avocado and basil; and salt-baked beetroot with smoked eel, duck liver and sorrels. You’ll be expecting pubs, though, we imagine, and Kent doesn’t disappoint – take your pick from the Bridge Arms in Canterbury, whose chefs cook exclusively over coals; the Fordwych Arms, with its pretty riverside setting; or the 17th-century Tiger Inn in the quaint village of Stowting. Also of note: the Dog at Wingham and the Kings Head in Wye. Oh, and don’t forget to swing by the coast for oysters in Whitstable.
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this manor-house hotel in Ashford and unpacked their English sparkling wine and creamed honey, a full account of their gourmet break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Boys Hall in Kent…
An idealised view of olde England: quaint pubs, country gardens, ancient woodland. Boys Hall has all this wrapped up in one very pretty package, right down to its beamed ceilings, cask ales, immaculate topiary and 400-year-old oak furniture. And yet this patch of green, impossibly just five minutes from Ashford International train station, is somewhere we want to be right now, and again and again in the near future. Sure, the gorgeous surroundings help, but it’s mostly what’s on offer in its huge, timber-framed restaurant that has us dreaming of our next return. Plates of grilled meat and fish, ornamented with foraged tidbits, will keep us coming back for more – especially when we can wash it all down afterwards in its time-capsule-esque oak-panelled pub. Here be a Kentish delight.
