Need to know
Rooms
Nine, including five suites.
Check–Out
11am (late check-outs until 1pm can be purchased for an extra £60, subject to availability). Earliest check-in, 3pm.
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.
