Bath Place Hotel

About Bath Place Hotel

Bath Place is a cluster of seventeenth-century cottages arranged around a small flagstone courtyard, reached down an alley off Holywell Street. The cottages were built up against the old city wall and were occupied for a long period by Flemish weavers; the Turf Tavern, which most visitors spend some time trying to find, is immediately next door through the same warren of passages. New College is on one side, the Bodleian and the Sheldonian a minute away on the other.

The rooms are what you would expect from buildings of this age and character: small, individual, low-doored, with beams, uneven floors and windows onto the courtyard or the alley. Several are reached by narrow twisting staircases, and none of them are large. What they are is genuinely old and genuinely central, in a spot that no modern hotel could replicate, and they are priced well below the townhouse hotels on the High Street.

Breakfast is served on site and there is a small sitting area, but this is a compact, family-run operation rather than a full-service hotel, so do not expect a restaurant, a lift or a concierge. Anyone with mobility difficulties should ask carefully about which rooms are accessible. In exchange you get one of the quietest addresses in central Oxford, five minutes on foot from almost everything worth seeing, with the Turf and the Kings Arms on the doorstep. There is no parking; the nearest sensible option is the Thornhill or Water Eaton Park and Ride.