Abbey House - Penally Abbey Near Tenby
Penally Abbey is one of the loveliest hotels in Pembrokeshire. Pretty rather than grand, with beautifully proportioned rooms, high ceilings and large ogee head doors and huge windows, through which one can see Tenby South Beach, Tenby’s Championship Links Golf Course and across the bay towards the Gower Peninsular.
The Hotel lounge is cosy in winter, with roaring log fires; bright and airy in summer, when the sun streams through the windows from dawn ‘til dusk. There are comfy sofas, leather Chesterfields, an Adam Fireplace and a beautiful, walnut, grand piano. The walls are lined with paintings of local artists, china plates and family photographs. Flowers and aspidistras grace the tables, and there is even a pompous well loved ‘Teddy’ bear presiding over the room. Evidence that this Tenby hotel welcomes children. One feels like a guest invited to a country house party, rather than a guest in a hotel.
Dining in the hotel’s restaurant is a romantic candle-lit affair. The room has many beautiful features: high coved ceilings; large ogee head windows; hand carved fireplaces; crystal chandeliers; round, polished, mahogany tables and views across the hotel’s gardens toward the sea. The style of cuisine is a blend of British and European and the hotel uses only the best ingredients.
All the hotel bedrooms are different styles, shapes and sizes. They are individually furnished , some with antiques, period pieces and four-poster beds, others are more contemporary or cottage style. All the rooms have garden or sea views.
The hotel has a small indoor swimming pool and snooker room which is situated just off the courtyard.
There is a small well-stocked bar with a fireplace, and a conservatory leading to the terrace garden. Here, on a summer’s evening you can enjoy a drink before dinner and watch the sun setting over the bay, the perfect end to each day of your stay in Pembrokeshire.
Situated in the hotel grounds can be found a Flemish chimney and the remains of St Deiniol’s chapel and St Deiniol’s Holy Well, a testament to the hotel’s monastic past. The lawned gardens surrounding the hotel host a myriad of exotic flowers, trees and shrubs, and in the month of May, the hotel’s woods burst with a purple haze of bluebells carpeting the ground.