The Manor House Hotel is more like a resort than a hotel. I stayed here with my family when I was 17, my sisters were 15 and 11, and my brother was 9, and the whole family had a great time. The hotel is essentially a sports and crafts centre, with accommodation attached. There is a good-sized swimming pool, and lessons can be arranged, and there are also the facilities to play golf, bowls, croquet, and other lawn games, and also archery practice (carefully supervised, so you don’t need to worry about little Johnny getting an arrow in his eye and imitating King Harold at the Battle of Hastings.)
The place is set up for children to pursue activities on their own – so, for example, my 9 year old brother could head off to the swimming pool, while my father played golf and my sisters, mother and I went for a walk. This means the hotel provides a break for parents as well as their children! There were snooker, pool, ping-pong and billiard tables in a big hut to play with, a restaurant for meals, and a bar for adults. (18+ is the legal drinking age in the UK.)
One of the features I enjoyed most about this place was the craft centre. Each morning and afternoon there were different activities on offer, such as jewellery making, glass engraving, and clay work. They taught you the basics if you needed to learn them, or let you experiment if that’s what you wanted to do instead. They had a number of clay moulds, and you could make pots, tea-pots, ornaments, or chess pieces among other things, which were then baked overnight and ready the next day for you to paint or glaze to your taste. My family still benefits from the dubious pleasure of an orange cat ornament by youngest sister made that holiday!
The accommodations and food are good, but not terrific – the main money here goes to the activities, so you’re hardly ever in your bedroom anyway except to sleep. One of the problems we sometimes had on summer holidays as a family was that the 6 of us wanted to do different things – this place catered to that perfectly. I enjoyed this place immensely, and would recommend it to other families with children of different ages without hesitation.