The Clarendon Hotel, Blackheath, London (Review)

I stayed 4 nights at The Clarendon Hotel, located just outside the main part of London in Blackheath. It’s about 20 minutes by train into the city, so a good option for people who want to stay somewhere calmer than the main part of town.

This is a review of my stay at The Clarendon in May 2022, plus information about my room, the hotel itself, and other things related to my stay.

Note: I paid for the room myself and have not received compensation from the hotel for writing this review. It’s my own thoughts and experiences and I’ve not been influenced in any way!

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The Clarendon Hotel (Blackheath, London, UK)

Quick Info

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I booked a single room through Chase Travel using my credit card points. This usually means I get shunted to a back room overlooking trash heap, and sure enough I was put in a back room right next to housekeeping’s storage closet. It’s a perfectly decent room, though, and actually the view was much nicer than I expected! (See below.)

It’s a Georgian building so there are some quirks, such as the angled ceiling in my room which reminded me of an attic.

There was a few issues with the room which brought down the whole feel of it. Mostly it’s a good room, but a few things needed fixing. For instance: I had an issue with the window where it wouldn’t stay open. The bathroom didn’t have a toilet roll holder. Part of the shower curtain rod was broken. The bed sheets were very low thread count.

I’m not sure if that’s typical of the rooms in the entire hotel or if I got a cheaper one because I used credit card points to book. Another issue, not necessarily the hotel’s fault, was there’s several heavy firedoors in the hallway leading to it, and I could hear staff and other guests opening and closing the doors throughout the night. Altogether it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle, but it’s just something to keep in mind.

Anyway, positives include a hot water kettle and coffee/tea area with PG Tips (my favorite); a nice little desk with chair; a decent closet with a safe and an overall good ensuite.

Standard UK single size bed and decent pillows, but very rough sheets. The actual mattress was fine but I’d never felt sheets like that in a 3 star hotel before! Yikes!

A really nice bathroom (besides the slightly broken curtain rod) with a deep tub and a good sink/mirror/vanity set up. Hot water and a heated towel as has been standard in England. The soap is in big bottles mounted to the wall, which isn’t my favorite but worked well enough.

I had a surprisingly nice view! It’s of the back of the hotel, so that’s I think a garbage area on the bottom right. But the houses and the trees make up for that!

The hotel breakfast is a self-serve buffet situation, but you have to wait for staff to seat you and then you tell them whether you want coffee or tea. Everything else you get yourself. Breakfast offerings are the standard British stuff of eggs (poached and scrambled), British bacon, hash browns, beans, tomatoes, plus muesli and cold stuff to put in it like yogurt and fruit. It was a good selection but the warmers weren’t doing a good job of keeping the food warm, unfortunately. The tea was really good!

Not a whole lot outside of the lobby area which had some tables and chairs for guests to sit at. There are other rooms for guests but you have to book them for an event– like the conference rooms or the larger tea rooms. I think they also have a garden space where they do afternoon tea events.

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