Abbey House, Barrow-in-Furness

Author's product rating:   

Advantages:	Perfect service, the whole day went as smoothly as possible
Disadvantages:	Too expensive for us common folk

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The Abbey House Hotel is Barrow's only 5 star hotel. I am writing this review after attending a function there, so the review is about this aspect of the hotel services rather than staying in the hotel overnight. Although I shall include a little information on the rooms for your information.

The Abbey House Hotel is set in 14 acres of woodland just on the outskirts of Barrow in Furness, in South Cumbria. It's is a sandstone building, first constructed in the early 1900's, and in its time is has been a mansion for Commander Craven and a rest home for the elderly, before becoming a hotel. There is a beautiful walk from the hotel to Furness Abbey itself.

When you first turn into the drive of the Abbey House you'll see that the building retains most of its original features, the new Duddon Suite, has been built in such a way that eventually it will blend in with the original building but for now it's lacking a few decades of wear and tear on the outside.

The Duddon Suite has a conference room that can hold up to 280 delegates, and the Great Abbey Hall can hold 120. Of course the main function of the hotel is being a hotel! And rooms come at a premium, prices start at £68 for a single room at the weekend, £94 for a single during the week, double rooms cost £111 and £114. Executive suites cost £88 for single or £151 for double at weekends or £134 for a single and £154 for a double during the week. If you want a Jacuzzi suite or a four poster bed you'll have to pay an extra £20 per person per night.

However, as I mentioned early, we were there for a wedding, well a wedding reception and evening, rather than the actually wedding itself. They Abbey House do have a licence to perform weddings, but this particular wedding was at a church first. There are three rooms for weddings, the Duddon Suite, which can cater for up to 180 guests, the Great Abbey Hall for up to 75, and the Furness Room for up to 25.

Firstly, getting to the Abbey House, it's on the outskirts of the town, so for most people it means driving. There is a very large car park though, so parking is not a problem, there's also plenty of room for a car to be parked at the entrance and still allow other cars to get to the car park. So you'll be able to drop off anyone who's infirm or any baggage at the door.

Unlike most hotels, when you walk in you're not immediately greeted by a reception, you have to walk down the corridor to your left slightly before reaching the reception desk, and to be quite honest compared to its surroundings, the desk looks a bit modern and out of place. But for the wedding there was no need to visit the reception, because the Abbey House had made sure there was a member of staff at the door, and then at ever 'junction' to make sure that the wedding party were all directed to the correct room. Just before reaching the bar and the patio doors to the gardens they had a young man handing out fizzy rose wine (can't you tell I'm a real wine buff!!) or orange juice to each of the guests. As it was a lovely day, most guests headed outside to the gardens whilst the wedding photographs were being taken, and awaited their turn in front of the dreaded photographer's lens.

Had the weather been bad, I would have imagined that most people would have retreated to the bar, the bar however was rather small (they do have other bars, but this was the bar specifically for the wedding party), and it would have been a tight squeeze if everyone had tried to get in.

After allowing time for all of the guest to arrive, the hotel staff began circulating with canapés, which mainly consisted of little prawn baskets, goats cheese and cream cheese nibbles. There seemed to be plenty to go around, and the staff kept coming back with more trays for about an hour.

Once the photographer had done his stuff, it was time to move onto the dining room for the Wedding Breakfast and the speeches. The management of Abbey House had discussed the arrangements before hand, and it was decided by both parties that they'd get the speeches out of the way at the start, so that everyone could enjoy their meals without being nervous about standing up and talking. Therefore the waiters came round with champagne for the toasts, I noticed that even though some people offered their glasses from their seats, the waiters still only poured the champagne from the correct side, whilst ensuring the label was clearly visible. A nice touch, although if I hadn't seen it on a TV programme I wouldn't have known that was the correct way to pour wine!

The master of ceremonies then took charge, and introduced each speaker as it was their turn, he had already taken them to one side and passed on some hint on how to keep calm and try to avoid nerves when speaking, which I thought was a really lovely thing to do, as I don't know anyone who particularly likes to get up and talk. Once the speeches were complete the masters of ceremonies took the bouquets from the mothers of the bride and groom to keep safe, and announce that the wedding breakfast would be served. I know it's a tradition, but it still sounds daft to me, to have a wedding breakfast at four o'clock in the afternoon.

As with the wine, the waiters and waitresses were totally professional in their approach, and did a great job making sure everyone was served quickly and with no fuss. There was a decent amount of time before they collected in the used plates, not so quick that people where rushing to finish, and not so long that the empty plates were left lying on the tables, getting in the way.

The food was beautiful, obviously I can only speak for the meals I had, which was Thai style fishcakes, roast beef and cheesecake. The beef was absolutely wonderful, totally melt in the mouth, which is something that I can never manage with beef no matter how I try to cook it, and the fishcakes were also lovely. Although initially I thought 'oh no' when they came and they were on plates with just the fishcake in the middle and then circles of sauce around the outside in a haute cuisine style of cooking, something I've never seen the point of, but it was very appetising and very filling. The main course came with the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on the plate, and the vegetables were served silver service. The only thing I can't say I enjoyed was the cheesecake, there was far too much cheesy layer (about 2 inches thick) and it was rather bland and tasteless, and the whole portion was far too big.

Once all the food and the coffees were out of the way, the guests were asked to retire to the bar or to the terrace, whilst the staff rearranged the room for the evening (at this point it was about 6pm, the evening guests were due to arrive at 7.30). The design of the gardens is a bit lacking here, because the sun hit the terrace in the afternoon, by the evening it had moved around to the front and side of the building. The only seating around that side was a single bench in a small natural alcove. With a bit of extra thought, they could have put a second terrace around this side for sitting out on a lovely summers evening, such as the one we had.

It didn't take long for the staff to rearrange the room, and soon the DJ was able to start playing this music from the in house DJing suite (I'm sure it has a technical name, but I have no idea what that might be). However, they didn't really leave an awful lot of space, in my opinion they left far too many tables in the main room, and didn't have enough casual seating, so the area left for a dance floor was only about 10ft x 15 ft, hardly room to swing a cat, never mind strut your stuff (not that you'd catch me doing that these days).

During the evening the staff were serving food upstairs, this time they served chilli and rice, with a choice of nachos or spicy potato wedges (or both), and a choice of coleslaws and side salads were available for guests to help themselves.

My major gripe with the Abbey House was the price of the drinks. I don't go out a great deal, and on the two occasions a year I normally venture out, we'll end up at the local Wetherspoons, and pay about £5 for a bottle of White Zinfandel to share between us. I almost dropped like a stone when I ordered a glass of rosé for myself and a bottle or Corona for my brother and the price came to £8.45. I later discovered it was £5.50 for the rosé alone! Small cokes for the children cost £2.50 each. I know you're paying for the surroundings, but my goodness those prices are extortionate. I'm not sure on the prices the bride and groom paid, but from the snippets I heard they were certainly charged a pretty penny for the service they received.

My mini gripe is that they didn't have snacks behind the bar. I know this sounds petty, but my son is Mr Fusspot when it comes to food, and he'd rather boil his head than eat something like chilli. So I had hoped just to buy a packet of crisps to stop him moaning, but neither the wedding bar, nor the main hotel bar had snack of any kind.

I have to say it was worth it though, the day went without a single hiccup, and the bride was beaming the entire day through, it would have been worth almost any price to see her so happy.