Check-in and check-out

Arriving

Rooms are ready from 3:00pm. If you get here earlier you are welcome to leave your bags, use the parlour and the garden and go out again — that costs nothing and needs no arranging. Sometimes a room is ready at one in the afternoon and we will give it to you; we will not promise it in advance, because the honest answer is that it depends on who left that morning and how many rooms turned over.

The part people get wrong

Somebody is on the desk from 7:00am until 10:00pm, every day. After ten there is nobody in the building whose job is to answer the door.

If you are going to arrive later than ten, telephone before 6:00pm that evening. We will put a key in a lockbox by the garden entrance and send you the code, and there is no charge and no limit on how often you can ask. If you have not spoken to us and you arrive at midnight, you may find nobody here at all.

This is not a threat and it is not a policy we are proud of. It is what a fifteen-room building with nine members of staff can afford, and a website that implies a night porter because it never mentions the question is lying by omission. If a twenty-four-hour desk is what your trip needs, this is the wrong building and we would rather you knew that now.

The desk closes at ten at night. Check-in is from 3:00pm and the desk is staffed until 10:00pm. Arriving later than that is fine if you telephone before 6:00pm the same evening; arriving later without telling us may mean nobody is here.

Leaving

Check-out is 11:00am. Bags can stay with us until 10:00pm on the day you leave, in a locked room by the desk, at no charge. The parlour and the garden are yours after check-out too — a guest with an evening flight does not have to sit in a station for six hours.

A late check-out until 1:00pm is free when the room is not needed. We can usually say the night before, and if we cannot, ask at breakfast rather than at eleven.

If your plans change while you are here

Adding a night depends on whether that room is free on that night, which is a real number and not a negotiation — there are 15 rooms in this building and no more. Leaving early is charged for the nights you stayed plus one, unless you tell us more than three days ahead, which is the same three days as the cancellation policy.

Free until three days before you arrive. Free cancellation until three days before arrival. Inside three days we charge the first night. Same terms on every room, and a cancel link in your confirmation e-mail that needs no password.