The Bull And The Hide

Vanea was such a pleasure. We popped into the bull for our Xmas Eve celebrations and got such lovely service from him. He was kind and jolly, and kept the festive spirit going. You don’t often get service like that the day before Christmas. We’ll definitely be back!

We had a small, very clean room, daily housekeeping, good quality toiletries, and access to a little pantry with a few drinks and snacks. Liverpool Street Station is just across the street, Spitalfields Market is a five-minute walk away, and there are lots of good places to eat and excellent public transport. It’s a handy area for sightseeing, with the tube making it easy to get to London’s sights. Those were the positives of our recent four-night stay. I wouldn’t stay again. Booking.com listed the hotel as having four stars, which was one of the main reasons I chose it, but The Bull and The Hide has no stars. That felt like false advertising, especially at over 250€/night. Check-in was easy but odd. The employee didn’t ask to see any documentation or booking confirmation. I gave my last name and got a key. We expected the tiny top-floor room and the many stairs, but our phones had no mobile data there. That wouldn’t have been a problem if the WiFi worked. We could connect without a password, and sometimes it worked very slowly, but usually it wasn’t available at all. For this price, I’d expect WiFi boosters on every floor. The smart TV was a decent size, but not very smart: Amazon prime worked, but there was no Netflix, HBO, Disney+, Sky or satellite TV, just prime or British channels. On our first evening, we heard someone trying to open our locked door as we were leaving for dinner. When we opened it, a man was about to put a key into the lock. He turned out to be an employee who said he just wanted to check that the door was shut for security. It left us feeling really unsafe, so we made sure not to leave valuables in the room. If I’d been travelling alone, I would have asked for a refund immediately and stayed elsewhere. There’s no sign to put outside if you don’t want to be disturbed or don’t need housekeeping. I thought that was standard. At checkout nobody asked how our stay had been. They just took our keys, and that was it.

This was a horrendous hotel experience. I booked three days but left after the first night because the rooms were dusty and stained, noise from the pub downstairs carried into the room, and the place didn’t feel safe or secure. It was too late to find anything else nearby that wasn’t exorbitantly expensive, so I stayed that first night and spent the evening searching for another hotel. At checkout the next morning, I was told the other two nights had been refunded. Once I was back home, the booking platform said the hotel hadn’t actually refunded the nights I didn’t use. In the middle of a busy trip, I missed that the confirmation email hadn’t arrived, which was definitely my oversight. The platform and I both tried repeatedly to contact the Bull and the Hide to remove the charge, but they didn’t respond. To clarify my earlier point, I sent the hotel two follow-up messages with timestamps within a week of my stay asking them to confirm the refund, and neither got a reply. Expedia also tried many times to reach them. It couldn’t process the refund without confirmation from the hotel. All that was needed was an email receipt confirming I hadn’t used the two additional prepaid nights.

Think of it as an overpriced bed and breakfast without breakfast. The rooms are tiny, there’s a pub downstairs, and the place smells like one. At night you can hear and feel it too. Paying €300+ a night and having to use the pub’s shared WiFi is borderline insulting. London generally, and this hotel in particular, sells itself with all the “historical, established in 1600 and blah-blah-blah” fluff. No denying they know how to market it, but the quality for the price is very low. Avoid unless there’s no other option.