For British people of a certain age, the nation’s most famous hotel will always be Fawlty Towers. Though John Cleese and Connie Booth’s 1970s BBC sitcom was ridiculous and excruciating, the Torquay guesthouse where it was set was also distinctly familiar, an only slightly exaggerated version of the accommodation prevalent around the English coast. Pebble-dashed and chintz-filled, and with a self-regarding formality at odds with the level of style and comfort being offered, for decades England’s seaside hotels seemed stuck in the past, left behind by the tourists heading to more exciting foreign shores thanks to the advent first of package tours, then budget flights.
Recently, though, these most un-hip of hotels have been undergoing something of a reinvention. Prompted by a resurgence of the staycation — and a convenient craze for cold-water swimming — a new generation of owners have revamped ageing properties. And by adding good food, cocktails and spas, they have created an attractive alternative to the self-catering cottage holiday. Here are 10 to try this summer, some pioneers of the movement, others new openings, but all making a splash.
Harbour House, Flushing, Cornwall
A dinky ferry ploughs across the mouth of the Penryn river, linking the artsy port town of Falmouth with the pretty village of Flushing. Overlooking the water on the Flushing side, Harbour House, dishing up ultra-local fish and meat alongside Cornwall’s Verdant beers and Polgoon cider, is the kind of pub you want to sink into for a while. It’s part of the Beach House Group, which also includes the clifftop Beach House Falmouth and the School House restaurant on Devon’s Flete Estate (its much-loved seafood hut on South Milton Sands sadly burnt down in May). “Falmouth is buzzing,” says Tamara Costin, who runs the seaside properties with her partner William Speed, “but we also love a coast walk along Helford Passage, rounded off with a pint at The Ferry Boat.” Alternatively, it’s a five-minute drive (or an hour’s pretty walk around the headland) from Flushing to Mylor Yacht Harbour, where you can rent boats to explore the Carrick Roads estuary.
Upstairs, back at Harbour House, the first overnight accommodation is due to open at the beginning of August — three bedrooms, each with views over the water. The Cornish location runs through the interiors: prints by Falmouth artist Sarah Humphrey, lighting from Penryn company Skinflint, and Land & Water toiletries, made with sea buckthorn oil and samphire, for a scrub after joining the Sunday-morning swim club and sauna session down on the beach. Doubles from £200 including breakfast; bookings open July 6; harbourhouseflushing.com
Chapel House, Penzance, Cornwall
There’s the welcoming intimacy of staying in the home of a great friend at this Georgian townhouse overlooking Penzance harbour, thanks to owner Susan Stuart’s nothing-is-too-much-trouble hosting. Tea and homemade cake appear on arrival; waterproofs and woolly scarves are on hand to borrow for walks. While there is no restaurant per se, breakfasts include raspberries from the garden and smoked bacon, samphire and poached eggs, and kitchen supper clubs are held on summer Saturdays.
The ground floor doubles as a gallery space, featuring works from the Newlyn School of Art. Wellness is also an increasing focus: there’s a hot tub and sauna, a calendar of workshops (an upcoming series focuses on fermentation), plus Stuart can magic up anything from breathwork sessions to Indian head massages. “The water is everywhere, so a swim is a must too, and the choices are endless — Jubilee Pool [a saltwater lido], harbours, lagoons, tidal pools or the open sea,” says Stuart. “My favourites are a low-tide dip at Cot Valley beach or the natural pool among the rocks at Boat Cove, just down the cliff path from Pendeen Watch.” Doubles from £225 including breakfast; chapelhousepz.co.uk
Hope Cove House, Inner Hope, Devon
Sandy feet and stripped-back simplicity are the mood at this foodie guesthouse overlooking a gorgeous golden curve of beach at Inner Hope. Owners Oli and Alexandra “Ra” Barker moved with their sons to Devon from London, where Oli had strong form in restaurants including Terroirs, Soif, Brawn and 6 Portland Road. Ra was a chef too, and their love of food is evident in the recipe-book-laden shelves in Hope Cove House’s open-plan living space, as well as on the short, daily-changing menu, which often includes lobster and crab caught by a fisherman in the village.
Outside, you’re never far from sea life either. “Inner Hope is an amazing place to paddleboard, exploring secret coves and beaches — you’ll often be tailed by a seal, and from time to time dolphins and bluefin tuna whisk by,” says Ra. Back at base, surfboards are propped up outside and wetsuits hang drying on pegs. Small children raid the toy basket filled with Lego, while everyone else tucks into grilled Cornish sardines or spaghetti vongole. Upstairs, the pick of the 10 bedrooms is Number 6, with double-aspect windows overlooking the bay. Doubles from £170, including breakfast; hopecovehouse.co
The Seaside Boarding House, Burton Bradstock, Dorset
On a clifftop overlooking Chesil Beach, just outside the village of Burton Bradstock, The Seaside Boarding House has all the restrained elegance of the whitewashed villa’s Edwardian origins. Mary-Lou Sturridge, the owner (and former longtime managing director of London’s Groucho Club), says she was inspired when creating the hotel by the Cape Cod paintings of Edward Hopper.
That translates into a considered collection of antique furniture in the nine bedrooms (rotary phones, no TVs), with a tasteful nod to the coastal location through the marine salvage and nautical paintings that hang alongside a collection of Peter Blake prints. “I wanted it to feel like something from one’s childhood, something that never really existed but that would be found comforting,” explains Sturridge. A clapboard-clad wraparound extension on the ground floor houses the restaurant and bar, and at 5pm there’s cocktail hour on the terrace, where a perfectly mixed negroni is a steal at £6. On a clear day you can see all the way along to the Isle of Portland. Doubles from £255, including breakfast; theseasideboardinghouse.com
Number 124 Brighton, East Sussex
Spread across four townhouses on Brighton’s seafront, Number 124 opened last November, the fourth outpost from the young GuestHouse hotels group (the others are in Bath, York and Margate). There are plenty of nods to the city’s heritage here: onion-dome lampshades in bedrooms echo the Royal Pavilion, George IV’s pleasure palace; the light-up helter skelter on the bar is like a miniature version of the one on Palace Pier. But still, this is very much part of a newly scrubbed-up Brighton, with a buzzy surf-and-turf restaurant and a cocooning spa, where sea-salt body scrubs are followed by cold-pressed juices.
About half of the bedrooms have views of the English Channel and the skeleton of West Pier, the best with balconies too. “We love the inclusivity of British seaside towns,” says Tom Guest, who founded the boutique brand with his brothers Tristan and James. “There’s something for all ages, from taking our kids to the amusements to early-morning swims at Sea Lanes [a 50m beachside pool].” Recently opened, The Terrace by Pearly Cow is the place to be at the other end of the day — fish and chips on the pier upgraded to magnums of Whispering Angel and lobster tacos. Doubles from £225, room only; guesthousehotels.co.uk
The Rose, Deal, Kent
“I’ve always loved our stretch of seaside,” says Alex Bagner, a former design editor of Wallpaper magazine who opened The Rose on Deal’s high street with her husband Christopher Hicks. “Partly for the quirkiness and nostalgia, but moreover, the fact it’s not perfect. The sea’s a bit cold, the beach is pebbly, the weather doesn’t play ball — but as a result it has to try harder in other ways.”
The Rose, with its nine colour-drenched bedrooms, was part of a vanguard of design-led seaside stays on the Kent coast when it opened in 2018, and the couple have certainly been trying hard since. Last year they added a wellness space, The Pelican Rooms, around the corner on the seafront, with daily sunrise Mysore classes, sound baths on Sunday evenings and treatment rooms for massages. The Blue Pelican, downstairs from the yoga studio, is their new natural wine bar and Japanese izakaya. Food is a huge draw at The Rose, too: executive chef Nuno Mendes comes down for a week at the start of each season to rustle up a fresh menu, which in summer might include flame-torched mackerel, Kentish cherries and shallots or cured sea bass with strawberries and seaweed. Doubles from £155, including breakfast and afternoon tea; therosedeal.com
Fort Road Hotel, Margate, Kent
Margate is the poster child for the creative rebirth of once-faded resort towns. Victorian amusement park Dreamland now has a stellar line-up of live music alongside the wooden rollercoaster and roller discos. And a growing gallery scene, spearheaded by the heavyweight Turner Contemporary, has been joined by TKE Studios, created by the town’s famous daughter, Tracey Emin. Of all Margate’s growing number of places to stay, Fort Road is the most deeply embedded in this art-driven revival, created in 2022 by Frieze co-founder Matthew Slotover and artist Tom Gidley, alongside developer Gabriel Chipperfield.
There’s a Tracey Emin neon in the bar, and 20th-century works in the bedrooms — the ones to plump for are numbers 4 and 9, which have window seats and sea views. This summer the restaurant will open a terrace too, the place to tuck into the popular hake with peperonata while pondering which exhibition to catch first. “Carl Freedman, 243 Luz, Roland Ross and Quench galleries all have excellent programmes,” recommends Slotover. “And you can’t visit Margate without going to the Shell Grotto — a folly decorated with over four million shells, that was discovered in 1835 but whose origin and artist are unknown.” Doubles from £145, including breakfast; fortroadhotel.com
The Suffolk, Aldeburgh, Suffolk
“Aldeburgh is past the last train station and beyond motorways. Being the end of the line means that it’s a destination, not a through road,” says George Pell, who decamped here during the pandemic and never left. “People commit to reaching it and relax into its sedate rhythms.”
Previously managing director of L’Escargot in London’s Soho, he opened The Suffolk on Aldeburgh’s well-heeled high street in 2022. It is more restaurant-with-rooms than hotel, with an assured menu starring dressed crab with pickled cucumber and native lobsters glistening in garlic butter. Pell’s preferred daily rhythm starts with a swim in the sea, which is just a quick dash out the back of The Suffolk (Dryrobes and hot coffee are on hand afterwards for guests who follow his example). Later he’ll be darting between tables in the bar, plying happy diners with oyster martinis and reeling off recommendations to weekenders (Pinch at Maple Farm near Saxmundham for homemade gelato; ham and cheese croissants from Pump Street Bakery in Orford; the White Hart for a Guinness . . . ). Take them all, greedily, then sleep off the excess in one of the six bedrooms. Doubles from £180, including breakfast; the-suffolk.co.uk
The Maltings, Weybourne, Norfolk
At various points a silk mill, an artist’s studio and a granary, The Maltings reopened last summer, an attractive cluster of flint-walled buildings just a 10-minute stroll from the North Sea. Bedrooms decorated in sandy neutrals are spread across the main house, cottages and former stables, but the heart of the action is the Grain Store restaurant — a huge vaulted space that turns out impressive seafood (Cromer crab agnolotti, Brancaster Staithe smoked salmon).
“North Norfolk has been a constant in my life — my earliest holiday memories are along the coast at Blakeney,” says Philip Turner, founder of the Chestnut Group, which owns The Maltings and a clutch of pubs across East Anglia. “As the coast moves east towards Sheringham, the feel changes — it’s more rugged, with a history of smugglers.”
The beaches here stretch for miles in either direction. Head east, beyond Sheringham, and Weybourne’s shingle becomes golden sand. Wander west to reach Salthouse, where Cookies Crab Shop is run by the third generation of the Cooke family. “You can’t beat a fresh-that-morning crab sandwich looking out over the salt marshes,” adds Turner. Doubles from £180 including breakfast; themaltingsweybourne.com
Saltmoore, Sandsend, North Yorkshire
For generations, Yorkshire families have holidayed at Sandsend, a fishing village just outside Whitby, but the opening of splashy Saltmoore last year put it on the map for even the softest of southerners. Handsome bedrooms are spread across the main Victorian building and the more family-friendly Beach House. It is the work of Love Island star Montana Brown and her property developer fiancé Mark O’Connor (his family’s firm, the O’Shea Group, is building 184 holiday lodges elsewhere on the estate’s 85 acres with Galliard Homes).
The couple had the good sense to draft in Yorkshire favourite Tommy Banks, of The Black Swan at Oldstead, as consultant chef, and put former Fife Arms chef Adam Maddock behind the stove. Fine-dining restaurant Calluna arrives later this year, joining the new pizza restaurant, light-filled brasserie and bright-eyed wellness café. “Down on Sandsend beach, Fish Cottage also dishes up generous portions of fish and chips, best eaten outside on the benches,” says O’Connor.
Whatever the Yorkshire weather serves up, Saltmoore’s spa offers a cosseting alternative to a North Sea dip with its salt-lined sauna, indoor pool and treatments using British beauty brand Wildsmith Skin. Doubles from £200 at The Beach House and £300 at Saltmoore House, room only; saltmoore.co.uk
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