Suffolk, United Kingdom

The Ickworth Hotel & Spa

Price per night from$259.54

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (inclusive of taxes and fees) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (GBP192.50), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

The Ickworth Hotel & Spa Photos

Style

Family seat

Setting

Peaceful parkland

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At The Ickworth Hotel & Spa in Suffolk, a marquess’s imposing country pad has been made over as a family-friendly escape. The hotel occupies the east wing of the Italianate palace and has a modern British restaurant and 1,800 acres of parkland in which to walk off the Sunday roast. Playful, pattern-mixing interiors, plus popcorn-fuelled cinema screenings and a stellar kids’ club (parents, cue your moment for a massage) cement The Ickworth as a stately home-from-home.

Smith Extra

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Cream tea for two

Facilities

Photos The Ickworth Hotel & Spa facilities

Need to know

Rooms

37, including nine suites.

Check–Out

11am, and check-in is at 3pm.

More details

Rates include a breakfast of both buffet and à la carte options, plus access to the whole National Trust house and estate and daily tours of the rotunda.

Also

Unfortunately, The Ickworth Hotel & Spa is not suitable for guests with limited mobility.

At the hotel

Tennis courts, cinema, art gallery, games room, library, charged laundry service and free WiFi throughout. In rooms: HD TV with Chromecast, Nespresso coffee machine, tea-making kit, mini fridge, free bottled water, bathrobes, slippers and Elemis bath products.

Our favourite rooms

To have the restaurants, kids’ club and rotunda close at hand, opt for a room in the main house. That said, the Dower House was worked on by John Vanbrugh, who also designed Blenheim Palace, so you’ll have stately surroundings wherever you stay there. If you’re descending on the countryside as a whole clan, consider the Butler’s Quarters, where you’ll have three bedrooms plus a living room, dining space and boot storage.

Poolside

The spa’s heated indoor pool is flanked by sunloungers, with light flooding in through the glass wall at one end. It's open from 7am to 9pm, with adults-only hours daily from 10am to 11am and 3pm to 4pm.

Spa

Botanical-infused Elemis products form the basis of the spa’s tailored treatments, which include massages, facials and a Japanese head-spa ritual. The spa garden, where you’ll find a hot tub and sauna, is adults-only. Little Smiths can get in on the relaxation too, with junior treatments available for over-eights. And if you find you have energy to burn after all that unwinding, give yourself free rein at the gym in the former stable block.

Packing tips

There are bikes to rent at the estate, but during term time the dates are limited and hires are on a first come, first served basis. If a countryside cycle is non-negotiable, break out the bike rack and bring your own wheels.

Also

The art collection intended for display in The Ickworth’s rotunda was seized by Napoleonic forces, but generations of Herveys recouped the loss, sourcing works by Gainsborough, Reynolds, Titian and more, which you can now view on daily tours.

Pet‐friendly

Dogs are welcome at The Ickworth Hotel & Spa. There’s a nightly fee of £25 per dog, and a maximum of two dogs per room. Dog beds and bowls are provided and your four-legged friend is allowed in the restaurant. See more pet-friendly hotels in Suffolk.

Children

All ages are welcome.

Best for

Babies and up.

Recommended rooms

Most room types can sleep at least two children, and baby cots can be added to them all. Two- and Three-Bedroom Suites and Family Rooms will suit larger families.

Crèche

The Den is the hotel’s kids’ club for little ones aged three months to eight years. You’ll have two hours of free childcare at the Den for each night of your stay, and extra sessions can be booked for £20 a child. Advance booking is essential, and you’ll need to stay at the hotel during sessions. During term time, weekday sessions run from 9.30am to 11.30am, followed by family activities for parents to join, including cookery, nature walks and scavenger hunts in the afternoon. On weekends and during school holidays, kids’ club sessions run from 9.30am to 11.30am and 2.30pm to 4.30pm.

Activities

There’s a games room with consoles, pool and table football; and a library stocked with picture books and board games, plus daily screenings in the cinema room. Outside, you’ll find a kids’ play area, toys and garden games.

Swimming pool

The spa’s indoor pool is open to all ages, except during the adults-only hours from 10am to 11am and 3pm to 4pm.

Meals

Children’s menus, high-chairs and purées for infants are available at the restaurants. There's also a special range of fruity mocktails cocncocted for kids. The hotel also has bottle-sterilising and milk-warming facilities.

Babysitting

Babysitting can be arranged with advance notice for an extra fee (from £25 an hour, for a minimum of two hours).

No need to pack

aby kit, Yoto story players, pushchairs and video baby monitors can be borrowed from reception for free — you’ll need to pay a refundable £150 deposit for the baby monitors.

Food and Drink

Photos The Ickworth Hotel & Spa food and drink

Top Table

Whichever dining room you're in, angle for a spot looking out over the gardens.

Dress Code

Place yourself wherever you feel most at home on the sartorial spectrum between land girl and lord or lady of the manor.

Hotel restaurant

The hotel has two restaurants, with the same seasonal British menu served at both. An Old Winchester cheese soufflé followed by sticky-toffee pudding feels right at Frederick’s, where the wood-panelled dining room leans more formal. Light-filled and more laidback, the Conservatory is ideal for grazing on Suffolk charcuterie or tucking into handmade pasta with younger kids in tow. Afternoon tea is on the cards, too (in fact, one is included as your Smith Extra), including options for children (and dogs, should your pooch be so inclined).  

Hotel bar

The hotel's cocktail menu is refreshed as often as those drinking them are, so you'll find seasonal flavours. But there are the classics (Espresso Martini, Aperol Spritz, Negroni) and many given a fruity twist, plus a varied range of mocktails. 

Last orders

Breakfast is served at both Frederick’s and the Conservatory from 7am to 9.30am; lunch from noon to 2pm; afternoon tea from noon to 4.30pm, and dinner from 5pm to 8.30pm.

Room service

If you’re staying in the main house, you can order dishes to your room between 7.30am and 8.45pm.

Location

Photos The Ickworth Hotel & Spa location
Address
The Ickworth Hotel & Spa
Horringer
Bury Saint Edmunds
IP29 5QE
United Kingdom

The Ickworth Hotel & Spa is surrounded by a 1,800-acre country estate near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk.

Planes

London Stansted is the nearest major airport, around an hour’s drive from the hotel.

Trains

From London Liverpool Street, you can be at Bury St Edmunds railway station in under two hours. It’s about a 10-minute drive from the station to the hotel.

Automobiles

The Ickworth is around a two-and-a-half-hour drive from London. Having your own wheels will be handy if you want to explore beyond the estate. There’s a free private carpark at the hotel.

Worth getting out of bed for

There are any number of ways to approach rambling around The Ickworth Hotel’s estate, but the gentle, circular route — taking in some of the prettiest parkland — is a good place to start. If you're up for something longer, walk or cycle from the hotel to Nowton Park, where you’ll find wildflower-dotted woodland. In Bury St Edmunds, the ruins of the Benedictine abbey sit atmospherically amid blooming gardens. On a different tack but equally as historic (brewing has been afoot in Bury since the Domesday Book was written), the town is also home to Greene King’s Westgate Brewery, where you can book tours and guided beer tastings. Suffolk’s viticulture might be a more modern development, but head for a wine tasting at Giffords Hall vineyard and see why their Bacchus is already a classic. When you’ve kids in tow, it’s hard to beat a day spent romping around a grand old house — Kentwell Hall, a moated Tudor manor, answers the call with a calendar of family-friendly events and, crucially, a cosy tearoom.

Local restaurants

A pub lunch at the end of a country walk is always a fine idea — the family-run Six Bells in Horringer is around a half-hour stroll away through the estate, and serves hearty, seasonal food and East Anglian beers on tap. In Bury St Edmunds, Pea Porridge’s Moorish-influenced fine-dining menu changes depending on the market finds that day. Pair your local-venison moussaka or cauliflower shawarma with a bottle from the biodynamic wine list. At Bellota, also in Bury, sit at the counter around the open kitchen to watch husband-and-wife chef duo Ruben and Gabi at work. Questions and conversation are encouraged as they prepare your lunchtime sharing plates or, come evening, an elevated Spanish tasting menu.

Local cafés

No 5 Angel Hill serves locally roasted coffee and homemade cakes with a view of Bury’s cathedral and the Abbey Gardens.

Reviews

Photos The Ickworth Hotel & Spa reviews

Anonymous review

By Mr & Mrs Smith

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 aristocratic hotel near Bury St Edmunds and unpacked their gins, jams and gardening tools from the National Trust Shop on the estate, a full account of their bucolic family break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside The Ickworth Hotel & Spa in Suffolk… 

Approaching The Ickworth Hotel & Spa, which is flanked by leafy parkland, you might catch yourself in a ‘Lizzy Bennet seeing Pemberley for the first time’-style giggle. The Hervey family, whose ancestral home this was for 500 years, didn’t do things by halves. Frederick, the 4th Earl of Bristol, built the current house in the 18th century, inspired by the Italianate architecture he’d admired on the Grand Tour. Peek behind the imposing façade, though, and you’ll find this palace is actually the kind of family-friendly home where all can put their feet up.

True, you'd struggle to emerge from the Elemis spa without feeling mellow, but a sense of ease permeates the whole place, helped by StudioJill’s brightly hued, refined rustic interiors. Raid the storybook-stocked library, nurse G&Ts in the drawing room or set off from the front door for a bracing country walk — making yourself at home is a cinch at this stately but unstuffy stay.

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Price per night from $259.54

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