Old Parsonage Hotel

About Old Parsonage Hotel

The Old Parsonage is the older and softer of the two hotels in the Oxford Collection, a low seventeenth-century stone house set back behind a wall at the point where St Giles' becomes the Banbury Road. Ivy and wisteria cover the front, the entrance is through a small courtyard, and the whole thing feels like a country house that a city has grown around - which is more or less what happened.

Inside there are 35 rooms, all different, spread between the original house and a discreet later wing. Expect low ceilings and beams in the old part, more space and light in the newer rooms, and a scattering of antiques and modern art throughout. Several rooms open directly onto the garden, and there is a roof terrace with a fireplace that gets used far more than an English roof terrace has any right to.

The Parsonage Grill runs all day, hung densely with portraits and prints, and is a proper Oxford institution rather than a hotel dining room; afternoon tea in the garden is a fixture in summer. Guests can borrow bicycles, and the hotel will arrange punting and college visits. The position suits anyone who wants to be near, but not in, the tourist crush: it is a five-minute walk to the Ashmolean and the Randolph, ten to the Bodleian, and Jericho's restaurants are just around the corner. There is a small amount of on-site parking, which needs booking in advance.