Lumley Castle Hotel delivers charm, grandeur, good food and canine comfort

 One of my most treasured memories from a momentous, highlight-filled first trip to England was spending a night in a real castle.  As a 16-year old obsessed with history and legend, bedding down someplace that had been standing since the 14th century and claimed several ghosts was hard to beat.

When, in planning our "staycation" to the North,  I discovered that Lumley Castle was still operating as a hotel, I couldn't resist the temptation to return. Would it live up to my golden memories? Yes.

Of course, I look for different things these days. I've stayed in many historic properties and have far higher expectations than did my 16-year-old self. I'm happy to say that Lumley Castle succeeds as a boutique hotel, bar and restaurant, its staff provides impeccable service and its decor is a delight. And yes, it's still rather fabulous to sleep in a castle.

The square stone keep with towers in each corner sits on a wooded escarpment above the river Wear. Nearby Chester-le-Street dates back to Roman occupation (chester an evolution of the Latin castra, or castle). The town is not terribly interesting these days, but Lumley has the triple advantage of being just off the A1, sitting in splendid isolation formed by parkland, forests and golf courses, and is just a 15-minute drive to Durham. Cricket fans will also appreciate that the park below is home to the Durham County Cricket Club.

Lumley's 72 guest rooms are split between the main building and a stable block to one side. Though tempted by the four posters and grand decor of the main castle, dogs are only allowed in the stable block. This was no sacrifice. Decor in these less expensive rooms is chinz-and-old-prints English charm, mattress and bedding were top quality, the dogs had their own alcove and the exposed beams and door frames were just high enough for my husband to avoid cracking his skull. That the shower head was at his chin level we'll forgive; it's tough getting modern amenities into an old garret.

Inside the main castle, the ground floor houses check-in, the bar and restaurant. (And a ghostly escape room experience that wasn't operating during the pandemic.) Stone slab floors and groin- and barrel-vaulted ceilings give these rooms away as former cellars, but past renovations punched windows into the Medieval fabric and more recent changes create a plush atmosphere. 

The check-in area screams ye olde England with its heavily carved brown furniture, while the library bar ... just renovated in January ... goes for a cosy Georgian country house look. 

Knight's Restaurant, also refreshed at the start of the year, and the rest of the ground floor have a curiously Italianate feel. Reproduction busts of Roman emperors and their consorts stand on pedestals along the hall, Italian statues observe the diners, prints of Florence hang in the bathroom and lunettes of the Medici villas fill the arches in the main dining room. A secondary dining room with magnificent upholstered walls even has those wonderful, and now doubtless horrifically politically incorrect, life-sized figures of black boys in turbans holding up lamps that the Venetians are so fond of. I'm fairly certain that the profile bas reliefs of noblemen above the main arch in the courtyard depict Renaissance Italian dukes.

The decor may lean to the Italian, but the food is resolutely English, all proudly sourced from a 45-mile radius of the hotel. On our night in the restaurant we started with ham hock terrine and cured local salmon, moving on to roasted pork belly and pan fried cod. It's a limited menu, but all of excellent quality, and there's a small but well curated wine list which, like the decor, is heavily Italian. You can order off the same menu in the library, which we did on our second night with local Angus beef burgers on brioche buns. This was all thanks to a new chef who came in last year to transform the place, which news reports say had been stuck in a fine-dining, overly-traditional rut. Lockdown must have been particularly frustrating on the back of that overhaul, but they met the challenge with a flourishing take-away business from the kitchen door. While the simplification to bistro-style dining has provided excellent food in a relaxed atmosphere, anyone staying more than two nights would find the menu very limited. 

But I suspect the typical stay is only one or two nights, as people pause on the way north, locals have a nice night out or ... more typically ... attend a wedding.

The state rooms on Lumley's first floor confirm that this, like so many historic buildings in the UK, earns its living as a wedding and major party venue. Back in 1982 I never wandered beyond the stable block and the atmospherically Medieval ground floor, so I wasn't aware of the grandeur above. In the early 1700s the earl of Scarborough called in the fashionable Sir John Vanbrugh (architect of bigger things at Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace) to modernise the old fortification, providing a new entrance via a raised terrace and processional staircase at the front, a grand entrance hall and an enfilade of stately drawing rooms with ornate plasterwork and grand fireplaces. 

Weddings were still outside the bounds of COVID-19 safety when we visited, but the rooms were set up to show off their potential. There's a magnificent chamber on the front corner of the castle, flooded with light from enormous windows and boasting opulent plasterwork: a garter star in the centre of the ceiling and the heads of Roman emperors on the walls. Classic Vanbrugh Georgian baroque. The main hall has more of a "tudorbethan" revival feel, with deep red walls, lots of portraits, an enormous chimneypiece and minstrel's galleries for bands, bouquet throwing and lighting rigs. Other rooms are similarly grand and another was set up for a ceremony, suggesting that you might even be able to run two events here simultaneously. 

I suspect that staying at Lumley Castle might not be quite as refined an experience if you were an independent guest while their wedding machine was operating at full tilt. But for now, while all of their events are shut down, visitors can enjoy an intimate boutique hotel experience in some very grand surroundings. It's all even better than the 16-year-old me could have imagined.