The best hotels with pools in and around Bath
An insider's guide to the top hotels with swimming pools in and around Bath, including the best for indoor pools, saunas, steam rooms, luscious gardens, heated outdoor pools and spas, in locations including Bath city centre, Bradford-on-Avon and wider Somerset.
The Gainsborough Bath Spa
Bath, Somerset, England
9Telegraph expert rating
The first five-star hotel in Bath in 30 years, the Gainsborough is also the only one in Britain to have access to natural thermal waters. Named after the artist Thomas Gainsborough, who lived in Bath, the Grade-II listed building dates from the 18th century and is a stunningly imagined addition to the city. Care has been taken to build on the hotel’s Georgian characteristics by introducing a sensitive blend of the traditional and the contemporary under the auspices of the New York‑based firm Champalimaud Design. Roman columns and glass roof dominate the compact and exquisite Spa Village, which comprises three thermal pools, sauna, steam room and 11 treatment rooms offering a range of massages and Asian‑influenced therapies. Read expert review From £165per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
• The best hotels in Bath city centre
The Royal Crescent
Bath, Somerset, England
8Telegraph expert rating
This luxury hotel spreads over two townhouses in the centre of Bath's showpiece Georgian crescent, with a lovely garden and further buildings to the rear. Curvaceous staircases overseen by classical busts, lounges with chandeliers and oil paintings, and extravagant suites with elaborate stuccoed ceilings set the elegant tone. There are 45 bedrooms, roughly half in the townhouses in the crescent and half in the buildings at the back of the garden. The swanky Spa & Bath House is a big draw for many visitors to the hotel. The main communal area includes a 12-metre indoor "relaxation" pool, vitality pool, sauna and steam room. There are also six treatment rooms (local skincare products are used) and a fitness room, and the spa has its own Mediterranean-styled walled garden. Read expert review From £251per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
The Bath Priory
Bath, Somerset, England
8Telegraph expert rating
The Bath Priory delivers the refined atmosphere and all the trappings of an upmarket country-house hotel, yet within walking distance of the city centre. The crunch of gravel in the courtyard in front of the late-Georgian, Bath stone mansion, and the sweeping lawns, giant cedar trees in the three acres of beautifully maintained gardens to the rear, deliver country-house style in spades. As does the hotel’s plush lounges, with their ticking clocks, real fires and large-scale colonial-era, militaristic and sporting paintings. Its stylish swimming pool is better suited to relaxing than exercise, but there's also a heated outdoor swimming pool in the gardens. Read expert review From £155per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
• The best spa hotels in and around Bath
Macdonald Bath Spa Hotel
Bath, Somerset, England
8Telegraph expert rating
Set peacefully in expansive grounds just outside the centre of Bath, the large Macdonald Bath Spa Hotel – an amalgam of Georgian, Victorian and 20th-century buildings and wings – has an imposing grandeur. The hotel stands at the top of a long drive overlooking lawns and giant cedar trees. At its core is a Greek Revival mansion built in 1836 as a home for a general. Since then, additions have included a late-Victorian colonnade and less-aesthetically pleasing more modern wing. As well as seven treatment rooms, the spa includes a 15-metre indoor pool, a smaller hydrotherapy outdoor pool (very warm, with bubbles and jets), plus saunas and a steam room. There's also a well-equipped gym. Read expert review From £120per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
• The best luxury hotels in and around Bath
Combe Grove
Bath, Somerset, England
8Telegraph expert rating
Combe Grove is just beyond the southern fringes of Bath, at the end of a long, winding drive surrounded by 70 acres of mostly wooded grounds. Panoramic views unfurl from the main house, southwards across Monkton Combe valley and a patchwork of rolling countryside as far as the chalk white horse at Westbury. A stylish bar – the focal point of the hotel – has gilt-framed mirrors on one wall and a shiny copper top to the bar itself. The restaurant has been brought to life with an ethereal, arboreal mural on its vaulted ceiling. There's a sizeable, light-filled indoor pool, plus a sauna, steam room and whirlpool. Spa treatments are available. Other facilities include a large and well-equipped gym, a secluded, ‘lightly heated’ outdoor pool, and tennis courts, two of which are indoors. Read expert review From £81per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
Lucknam Park
Wiltshire, England
9Telegraph expert rating
This is one of Britain's best country house hotels. The hotel sits within a 500-acre estate that encompasses meadows, paddocks and woodland. The main building is a beautiful, symmetrical, creeper-covered Palladian mansion dating from 1720. Its public rooms are opulent and elegant, with a traditional country house feel. The spa complex includes a 20-metre-long indoor pool, a substantial half indoor, half outdoor hydrotherapy pool, and various thermal cabins (sauna, steam room etc). A vast range of treatments is on offer, as are yoga and pilates classes most days in the Wellbeing House, a separate cottage in the grounds where you can also have sunlight therapy and a dry floatation session. Read expert review From £230per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
• The best budget hotels in Bath
Homewood Park Hotel and Spa
Somerset, England
7Telegraph expert rating
Homewood Park is a fairly traditional, mid-sized country-house hotel around 10 minutes' drive from Bath. The multi-gabled Georgian mansion with Victorian additions overlooks 10 acres of grounds that often win local garden awards: picture large expanses of lawns (croquet in summer), topiaried hedges, ponds and mature trees. A classic country-house hotel look and atmosphere sets the tone in most of the bedrooms and public areas, such as a bar furnished with leather Chesterfields. In terms of facilities, there's a small but enticing spa, which in addition to two treatment rooms includes a decent-sized outdoor pool warmed year round to 28 degrees centigrade, a small indoor hydrotherapy pool, and a sauna and steam room. Read expert review From £108per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
Babington House
Somerset, England
8Telegraph expert rating
Lively but laid-back Babington House can make a fair claim to being the UK's original trendy country-house retreat. The honey-coloured Georgian house and converted outbuildings sit in expansive grounds that encompass a dinky (also Georgian) chapel, lake and pristine walled kitchen garden. Babington House's extensive facilities are a major selling point. One set of outbuildings includes sizeable indoor and outdoor swimming pools (both heated year round), a sauna and steam room, plus a cinema showing films every evening (including regular pre-release screenings). There's also a well-equipped gym and, overlooking the kitchen garden, the substantial, rustic-chic Cowshed Spa. Read expert review From £220per night
• The best hotels in Bath city centre
Woolley Grange
Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, England
8Telegraph expert rating
Woolley Grange is one of Britain's best upmarket hotels for families with younger children. The style of the rambling, multi-gabled mansion is of a lived-in, casual but comfy country retreat. The panelled lounge, with its well-worn leather sofas and open fire, sets the tone – as does Rex, the resident, ubiquitous Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. The 25 bedrooms, spread over the main house and outbuildings, have lots of character, with interesting old and modern furnishings, and beams, brass beds and roll-top baths in some. Indoor facilities include an attractively-designed spa with a swimming pool overlooking the walled garden, sauna, steam room and two treatment rooms. Read expert review From £95per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com Register Log in commenting policy
