The Swan Hotel, Wells

"Staff great, decoration and furnishings poor"

The staff were helpful and efficient. The room we stayed in (16) had been furnished expensively but badly. The sash chords on the windows were broken so the room was stiflingly hot on arrival and even when we could open one window it opened by about one inch. The blinds on the windows were fake - just a scrap of material with a fold, to look like a blind - not a real one. There was a real blind in the bathroom but it was narrower than the architraves of the window - it was not only too narrow but had "decorative" holes in the bottom through which you could look into the room opposite. The shiny bedroom curtains looked silly not only because there were hooks missing and they sagged but also because they had a large slit cut in them for a cable connecting the TV to the socket behind them. On the bed there was a fake counterpane a narrow strip of fabric like a runner instead of a real one. The bathroom had a towel rack immediately above the WC at a height that made a collision with your head inevitable whenever you used it unless you were either a child or petite. The food was good but the dining room was so badly (but expensively) decorated that we ended up having a good laugh about it. There were fake shutters on the window side making it look like a 1970's greek restaurant with a number of re-used sections of linenfold panelling that could have come from Hampton Court on the opposite wall. These were surmounted by plastic vines. In short, it would be a great place to stay if they could just replace the broken sash chords, remove the restrictors from the windows, remove all the silly "interior designer" stuff and replace it with basic, straight-forward, good quality furniture and fittings.

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