The Feathers Hotel

The hotel’s guest bedrooms all feature comfortable beds and flatscreen televisions and en-suite bathrooms but there are few other facilities in the rooms. One striking omission is the lack of tea and coffee making facilities, although guests can order tea and coffee from room service for no additional charge.

Common for a hotel in an old building, no two rooms at The Feathers are the same and the hotel’s corridors can sometimes feel like navigating through a maze. Most rooms are upstairs but there are two rooms on the ground floor and one of these is wheelchair-accessible.

The decor is not to everyone’s taste and includes bold wallpaper and a lot of bright colours such as pink and teal mixed with various shades of brown.

The hotel’s bar and restaurant is very popular and gets (mostly) rave reviews.

The fine-dining restaurant is excellent with British and European-inspired dishes made with local seasonal ingredients and served in a unique environment. The restaurant is particularly noted for its Sunday lunch set menu.

They also have a breakfast buffet, although it is sometimes an additional charge depending on your room rate.

The gin bar is impressive and it features an extensive selection of gin with a choice of over 450 different bottles of the stuff from all corners of the world. The bar has even made it into the Guinness Book of Records for its gin selection. If the 72-page gin list is a little overwhelming, start with Cotswold Gin, which is distilled just a few miles away. It is the perfect retreat if you enjoy a gin and tonic and with some of the cast and crew of the James Bond film Spectre staying here during filming at Blenheim Palace there is no better place for a martini ‘shaken, not stirred’.

The Feathers is also a great place for afternoon tea, which is served between 3pm and 5pm in the restaurant, the bar and the terrace. There are several options starting with a simple tea and biscuits and moving up to a cream tea, a traditional tea, a gin tea and champagne tea. The traditional tea comes highly recommended.

Even if you’re not staying here, the hotel is worth a visit for either afternoon tea or a drink at the bar.

The Feathers is right in the centre of Woodstock. The Oxfordshire Museum and the bus stop for buses into Oxford or Chipping Norton is only a two-minute walk from the hotel. The main gate to Blenheim Palace is a five-minute walk but it takes around 12-minutes to walk to the actual palace.