The Top 15 Hotels Near Island Bar
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A 17th-century manor wrapped in three acres of garden, Boys Hall is a country house hotel with nine individually designed bedrooms, all beams, wood paneling, and old-school floral prints that feel less like decor and more like the house just always looked this way. A barn extension holds the restaurant, and there's an on-site pub for rainy evenings and a terrace for the opposite. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.
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A restoration crew pulled up layers of bad decisions and found a magnificent parquet floor underneath, which tells you everything about how this small-town inn's renovation went. The Bell is a proper English hotel in a genuinely picturesque medieval town, with rooms that are mellow-toned and quietly luxurious, farm-to-table cooking in the restaurant, and Royal St. George's golf course a short drive away if you need an excuse to be here beyond the charm.
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A copper soaking tub for two sits at the heart of the spa, which tells you something about the ambitions of this boutique hotel. A Victorian building on the High Street, a short walk from the beach, it's been refitted in a warmly spare contemporary style. There's a restaurant, a rooftop bar in summer, and Margate itself keeps getting more interesting, with the Turner Contemporary drawing a crowd that's happily colonized the whole seafront.
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Tracey Emin originals hang in a 14-room boutique hotel directly across from Turner Contemporary, which tells you everything about who owns this place and why it looks the way it does. Art-world insiders renovated a Georgian shell into something warm and precisely styled, where every object feels chosen rather than sourced from a catalogue. The restaurant turns out Mediterranean-accented seasonal British cooking for those who can tear themselves away from the beach opposite.
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Local artists' work covers the walls at this upscale guesthouse on Dalby Square in Cliftonville, and the effect is closer to a boutique hotel than anything involving doilies and a laminated menu. The décor is eclectic, the breakfast is locally sourced, and evenings bring craft cocktails. Margate's restaurant scene is walkable from here, which is either convenient or dangerous depending on your willpower.
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Eight rooms, each different, many fitted with a turntable and a record collection: The Rose is a boutique hotel in a former pub on Deal's high street, reimagined by a pair of designers with an obvious weakness for vintage finds and saturated color. Roll-top baths appear in some rooms. The restaurant turns out modern British cooking that pulls its own weight. Rates start around £161 a night, which, for this much personality, feels like a fair trade.
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Picnic baskets packed with to-go cocktails and a beach blanket tell you something about the mood here. The Gallivant is a boutique hotel in Camber, East Sussex, holding a Michelin Key, and it pulls off a look that is equal parts surf shack and country inn without sliding into Hamptons pastiche. Rooms have bold color, custom headboards, stocked bookshelves, and more lounge space than you'd reasonably expect, with some opening onto private decks.
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A coaching inn that's been on Rye's High Street forever, the George has been quietly tidied up without anyone making a fuss about it. Half-timbered ceilings and deep antique bathtubs stay put; the beds are properly heaped with good linen. The floor plan is a cheerful maze of narrow stairs and odd turns. The George Grill leans into local seafood and regional produce, and pours English wines with the confidence of a place that knows France is right there.
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Livestock roam between the vines at this biodynamic wine estate outside Rye, which converted a hop barn into 11 rooms designed by McCully and Crane using reclaimed materials throughout. The bar pours the estate's own pinot noirs alongside homemade cider, and a Dutch barn handles wood-fired pizza in summer. It's the kind of place where the idealism is structural, not decorative, and the land actually shows it.
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A fashion designer owns this nine-room B&B on the edge of Hastings old town, and the eye for detail shows in every corner. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key. Each room has its own look, but the whole place holds together around a mix of period bones and sharp contemporary style. No children under ten keeps things quiet. Breakfast is made to order, spa treatments are available, and decent restaurants are a short walk away.
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Seven bedrooms tucked into 17 acres of Kent woodland, The Beacon is the kind of small country house hotel that makes you wonder why you ever book anywhere with a spa and a car park the size of a field. The house has had several lives, from wartime refuge to disco to family home, and that accumulated character shows in the rooms: velvet curtains, turret bathtubs, and long views across the hills below.
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The old gunpowder mixing pots are still here, repurposed as fire pits on the grounds of this 78-acre estate hotel near Battle. Inside, the design shrugs off every country house cliché: the library bar runs cherry-red walls under an acid-green ceiling, and rooms lean into woven texture and reclaimed timber rather than chintz. Foraging walks and pottery sessions fill the days. It's the kind of place that takes having a point of view seriously, and mostly gets away with it.
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David Bowie married Angie in this building, which is all the origin story a 23-room hotel in Bromley could ever need. The early 20th-century Old Town Hall has been restored with its stained glass, soaring ceilings, and wood paneling intact, with art deco touches folded into the newer sections. Rooms are compact and quietly considered, with CBD-infused teas and adjustable shower pressure among the small details that make the difference.
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A hotel that floats on an inlet off the Royal Victoria Docks, having arrived by barge from the Netherlands via the North Sea, which is quite a commute. Rooms are compact and industrial, all steel, concrete, and clean wood, with the better ones waking you up to Thames views. The rooftop terrace, green and long, is where the skyline really opens up. The team trains long-term unemployed Londoners in hospitality, so the name is a statement, not a slogan.
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A loft-style hotel in a sleek East London tower, The Stratford is part of Marriott's Autograph Collection and sits right on top of Stratford International station, which tells you something about its ambitions. Rooms lean New York rather than Elizabethan, with Space Copenhagen furniture and enough square footage in the penthouse to feel faintly absurd. A fitness center with a full class schedule and several bars and restaurants round things out.