I want to headline this review by saying that the staff at this hotel - reception, housekeeping and restaurant - without exception were pleasant, attentive, helpful and professional and they alone deserve a high-star rating.
Additionally, the hotel is very well located for all the main attractions in Winchester.
However ... I must concur with earlier reviewers and say that this is not a 4* hotel. It may well have been when Margo & Jerry Leadbetter stayed there but now it is dingy, tired and worn. The attention to detail in the cleaning of our rooms and the communal areas was poor - the internal telephone in one room (which didn't even work) had a layer of dust that was so thick it was solid. The bathrooms, while basically clean, were so shabby that it almost felt unhygienic. If we hadn't already paid a not insubstantial amount on check-in, we may well at this point have taken our chances with the Travelodge across the road.
We took our concerns to the reception staff who immediately did absolutely the right thing and offered us alternative accommodations and eventually an upgrade to 'executive' rooms which, while in slightly better condition, still lacked in cleanliness with a grape found under one bed and an abandoned sock under the other. Two out of four windows had very makeshift mechanisms which left the rooms a bit draughty.
I'm sure that this hotel was - and could again be - very nice, but it's clearly a couple of decades overdue for a refurb. A shame.
