The Saracens Head, Great Dunmow

 

Great Dunmow - The Saracens Head Hotel

High Street, Great Dunmow, Essex CM6 1AG

March 2022

 

Great Dunmow is a lovely little town. The High Street features a number of independent shops and restaurants, all perhaps a little pricier than some might expect, housed within old, undoubtedly listed, buildings, some dating from perhaps the sixteenth century. It's a few miles from Stansted Airport, which may be why the Saracens Head is such a nice place to stay.

Its rooms are not expensive; we paid £79 for a double, including breakfast. That’s cheaper than many Premier Inns. But, unlike a couple of other budget hotels in which we’ve stayed recently, it is a place I would be happy to go back to.

Set within the structure of an old coaching inn, the Saracens Head combines a bar, cafe, restaurant and hotel, seemingly very successfully. In these just post-covid times, it was, on the Thursday night we visited, busy. (At breakfast there must have been a dozen other guests eating when we were there, around 8am; perhaps not all of their 31 rooms were occupied, but it was good to see a hospitality business doing a reasonable trade.)

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Our room was in a block separate to the main hotel, perhaps built around 40 years ago. Construction was possibly not perfect - our window did not shut totally - but for our purposes it was fine. Indeed, the room was quite spacious, featuring a king size bed, and enough space around it not only for a bit of yoga exercises by guests but also for cleaners to get in there with the vacuum cleaner and make sure the place was properly serviced - which, generally, it was. The only cleaning failing I could find was the space between the secondary glazing and the window, someone needs to update the cleaning procedures to ensure the cleaners wave the vacuum in there to remove any dead spiders or errant dust particles. 

The ensuite bathroom was, unlike the room, compact; it was not a room in which one person could shave at the basin and another get in and out of the over-bath shower. But it was clean, recently refitted with good over-basin lighting (yay, I could see to shave!), a heated towel rail, and a grab rail to hang on to when getting in or out when using either the bath or the shower.

The shower worked well, although there was no thermostatic controller - it was a case of matching hot and cold taps to get the water ‘just right’. Water pressure at the basin left something to be desired, but it didn’t significantly lengthen the time needed to brush teeth or fill the basin to wash.

The room featured a radiator for heating, which worked well some of the time. It may be that the boiler was on some kind of timer, late in the evening we thought we needed a bit of heat and couldn’t get any, but the quality duvet kept the cold out. The TV worked well, offering normal Freeview channels, once we managed to switch it on - another point for the cleaners’ checklist (leave TV’s on standby ready for guests who won’t know how to switch them on!).

In-room tea and coffee options provided for more than our needs, and were more than adequate for the price we paid, and we even had complimentary biscuits. The in-room information folder was helpful but would have benefitted from TV operating instructions (where is the on switch?) and a menu for the restaurant.

The Saracens Head restaurant seemed to be very popular for diners; we did not eat there (we went to a lovely wine bar just along the road) but, if you are seeking a quality evening meal, it would seem to be a good place to go - one of many in the High Street. Breakfast was a generally well-organised affair, with a number of hot options (including smashed avocado on toasted muffin) swiftly delivered. Cereal options were somewhat limited (no porridge or weetabix), likewise fruit (only fresh apples - for which the supplied knives were barely suited), and  tea and coffee was from vacuum flasks at the buffet table, and, on our visit, could have been rather warmer.

After a number of disappointments at budget (and less-budget) hotels since the start of Covid it was refreshing to go somewhere that the staff seemed to, generally, know what customers are looking for. For the price we paid it was excellent value. Great Dunmow isn’t exactly a place that a lot of people go, or that we are likely to go to again soon (my previous visit there, to the Saracens Head - just the bar - was over forty years ago), but we’d be very happy to stay there again should the need for accommodation in the area arise. 

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The proprietors of other hotels offering B&B for something like £80 per night - or room only for £60 - should visit the Saracens Head to see what their guests should be able to expect. I hope the Saracens Head continues to do well.