Much-loved as one of the UK’s top family-friendly hotels, Fowey Hall — named after the Cornish coastal town that cascades beneath it — is the de facto flagship property of the Luxury Family Hotels group. An elegant Queen Anne Revival mansion that inspired Toad Hall in The Wind in the Willows, Fowey Hall had a multimillion-pound facelift in April 2023 that almost doubled its capacity to 60 rooms and added a heated outdoor pool and breezy interconnecting suites. An Ofsted-registered kids’ club (for which children get one free session a day) and portable baby monitors mean that adults can enjoy their stay as much as the children.
Overall score 9/10
Main photo: Fowey Hall in Cornwall
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Rooms and suites
Score 8/10
Rooms in calming tones of grey, white and green are spread across the main mansion and in an extension overlooking the outdoor pool. The new suites (charmingly named after local Cornish towns and beaches) are in a white outbuilding above the spa with Imax-wide views across the bay to neighbouring Polruan. Given its family focus, many rooms are interconnecting, and a handful have bunk beds. The most affordable are sweetly designed, with mint-green bathrooms and dove-grey walls, and are in the attic. All rooms, no matter the size, can fit a cot or children’s bed. Fowey’s Cornish location inspires both the art on the walls — postmodern paintings of waves and coves — and the amenities of crabbing kits and fresh milk bottles for babies in the fridges.
Food and drink
Score 8/10
The idea, as with all Luxury Family Hotels, is that parents can accompany their kids for an early supper of crowd-pleasers such as chicken nuggets and fish fingers in a family dining room, before returning later, baby monitor in hand, to the bar and adults’ dining room. This is an atmospheric space, dark wood-panelled and candlelit, with a menu focused on Cornish produce. Expect dishes such as fresh lobster caught from Fowey that morning, steak and harissa-covered French beans, with glasses of Hampshire’s sparkling Hambledon. In the summer months, dinner and drinks spill outside onto tables and outdoor sofas with elegant striped orange cushions. Breakfast is a joyful, chaotic affair in the family dining room, with cooked breakfasts alongside a buffet of cereals and fruit.
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What else is there?
Score 9/10
Kids are the main event here, and are treated like VIPs by cheerful staff. They’re exceptionally well-catered for with an Ofsted-registered kids’ club (called the Four Bears Den, and refurbished in 2023) that runs activities such as arts and crafts and messy play, as well as ad-hoc family events including mocktail tasting and bubbles each afternoon. Inside the mansion itself is a cutesy cinema that puts on kids’ films twice a day with proper flip-down seats and popcorn; and outside there’s a wooden pirate ship playground and a new heated pool. For the breathless adults relieved of their children, there’s a small spa — there are just two treatment rooms — and a new relaxation area that looks out across the bay, plus the drawing room, filled with games and coffee-table books, which is ideal for a coffee or pre-dinner drink.
Where is it?
Score 9/10
Crowning the chic-chi Cornwall town of Fowey, at the mouth of the eponymous river and impossibly busy during the summer months. There’s plenty to do in Fowey itself — crabbing or walloping a self-drive boat up and down the channel to Bodinnick — and also at the surrounding beaches, including picture-perfect Readymoney Cove, a short walk from the town. The nearest station, Par, is 15 minutes’ drive away and is a four-hour connection to London Paddington, via the scenic railway along the Devon coastline.
Price B&B doubles from £225
Restaurant mains from £20
Family-friendly Y
Dog-friendly Y
Accessible Y
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