The Buttery

The staff were really friendly and helpful, and the location is perfectly central for getting around. I had a nice big room on the top floor with plenty of space and everything I needed. On Friday night, though, it was very noisy outside until 1am or later.

This quaint hotel used to be a bookstore and has been restored by its current owners. There are just two large rooms per floor, with a spectacular view, and you can walk to a great variety of places of interest.

The Buttery Hotel is excellently placed for sightseeing. We could walk to lots of places of interest and save a lot of time, and our room was a good size with high ceilings. It had a coffee and tea maker, and staff replenished tea bags, coffee pods and biscuits daily. The bathrooms seemed renovated and were a decent size. Still, this was a very unpleasant stay. Room 301 had a horrible sewage smell that made the room miserable, especially at night when we were trying to sleep. We reported it at reception. The staff were always polite, but gave us conflicting explanations: one said it came from outside, while another admitted it was a known bathroom issue. We were frustrated that the hotel seemed to know about it without fixing it. They refunded 10% of the final bill for the inconvenience, but I'd strongly advise avoiding Room 301. The old spring mattresses were another major problem, very noisy and uncomfortable and made it hard to sleep. There were portable air conditioning units with vents out the windows. They'd probably help in summer, but they're quite loud and could be a nuisance at night. A small surprise was being asked to pay at check-in rather than checkout. There's no lift, and the narrow stairs make heavy luggage difficult to take to upper floors. There's no parking on site either, and nearby parking is very expensive at £25-£30 a day. If you're driving, I'd use one of Oxford's park-and-ride services, where parking costs around £4 a day, then take a short Uber ride to the hotel. For a multi-day stay this works out much cheaper. For example, four days at the park-and-ride would be £16, plus two Uber rides at around £20, roughly £36 total. That's a substantial saving compared with the £120 you'd likely spend parking in the city centre for the same period. The location and room size were good, but the uncomfortable mattresses and overwhelming odour in our room made the stay very disappointing.

Be clear about what you're booking. It's a 4-star "guesthouse", so don't expect the experience of a 4-star hotel just because you got a good deal. The room was nice, but it felt like they checked off requirements to get four stars, such as putting portable air conditioners out the windows, without creating a four-star hotel feel. There are no shared public spaces at all. The location is very central, but that means the room looks straight over the wooden benches on Broad street, where teenagers will likely hang out and make plenty of noise until well after midnight. Parking is up to you, and will be very expensive.