Eating here
The ballroom in the morning, the reading room the rest of the time
Breakfast in the ballroom
7:00-10:00, daily
Laid under the coffered ceiling at seven, cleared at ten, on the days the room is not let. When it is let, breakfast moves to the reading room and is better for it, because the reading room is smaller and warmer.
Bread, cheese, cured meat, eggs to order, fruit compote, and a pot of coffee that is not hurried.
The reading room
Open all day · light food 12:00-21:00
Newspapers in four languages, two fires in winter, and a short card of soup, open sandwiches and one hot dish from noon until nine.
It is where guests end up when the weather turns, which between October and March is most afternoons.
Dinner
19:00-21:30, Thursday to Sunday
Four evenings a week in the reading room, thirty covers, three courses. The kitchen does one menu and will adjust it for anything you cannot eat, provided the desk knows by four.
Sunday to Wednesday the kitchen does breakfast and light food only. Reception keeps a list of places in town and is frank about which of them is worth the walk.
Why breakfast is upstairs
Because the ground floor has no room for it
The 1903 plan gave the ground floor to reception, the office and the reading room. There has never been a dining room in this house, so the ballroom has always doubled as one in the morning.
It means the first thing most guests see of the building is its best room, with the shutters open and the chandelier off, which the house counts as a happy accident.