Today’s post is a little feature and a review for the Judges’ Court Hotel in York – this stay wasn’t gifted, we paid for it ourselves but I always think it’s useful to read reviews of hotels in mini-break locations because I’m never sure about Tripadvisor if I’m honest (too many conflicting views!). I just like to add reviews into the mix and let you know whether I’d pay to stay there again. We headed to York to see James Acaster because we couldn’t get tickets in Nottingham where we live and so decided to just make it a long Bank Holiday weekend mini-break because we’d only been to York on a very cold afternoon once together and then years ago as kids separately so we wanted to explore it some more.
Location
The location of this hotel literally couldn’t be better if you want a city centre location. It’s on the same strip of shops as Zara, H&M, Boots and just down from The Ivy and around the corner from the river. It’s a little bit set back from the street, you have to go down a little alleyway between a couple of shops to find it but it’s fairly easy to spot. I think the alleyway was actually next to Card Factory if that helps at all and you are actually going to stay here.
Parking
York is notoriously bad for parking. We would recommend parking at Marygate carpark which was a 10 minute walk from our hotel and was about £12 for 48 hours. We used YourParkingSpace which was so easy to use to find a space and book it, all you have to do when you get to the carpark is put a code in that lifts the barriers and it knows it’s you via ANPR and they reserve you a space in the carpark. It will say ‘full’ to all other normal carpark users if the people that have booked spaces haven’t arrived yet. If you want to grab £5 off parking, book via that link above and just put ‘Allie Redmond’ in when you pay and it asks if you’ve been referred by a friend. I’ll get £5 too. Again, this isn’t sponsored or anything, literally just what we used and a referral code to help you out!
Rooms
We actually had two rooms at Judges’ Court because we didn’t love our first room. They have three floors of rooms but one is essentially lower ground. There is natural light but obviously the ceilings are very low. It’s cosy and would have been fine in the winter when natural light isn’t obviously at it’s peak! As it was late May Bank Holiday it was quite warm and muggy so our room was too hot over the first night we stayed. As I say, would have been totally fine if it wasn’t 20-ish degrees outside. These photos are of the first room.
Our second room was lovely, almost identical but just with a much larger window and much higher ceilings so it felt a lot less cramped and was a lot cooler. They did provide fans in both rooms but we didn’t find them on the first night unfortunately! The bathroom was smaller in the second room but they were both perfectly formed and functional. Both bathrooms were really nice and clean with nice towels and lots of space to put your own toiletries. There was also Molton Brown shower gel, shampoo and body lotion which smelled amazing. The staff were also really helpful in allowing us to change rooms so we were very grateful that they were so accommodating and let us have a different room for the second night.
Facilities
There isn’t a restaurant at Judges’ Court so it’s literally a hotel, not a bed and breakfast. They do have the capability to order you in breakfast from Bill’s as they have an agreement which is quite cute and of course they have tea and coffee making facilities in the rooms which are lovely, including a little Nespresso machine. Breakfast isn’t hard to find in York though so this isn’t a problem. We don’t usually get breakfast when we stay away unless it’s included because we like to find amazing places to eat for all of our meals. There isn’t any other facilities either, simply just rooms but we didn’t need anything like a gym, pool or a bar on this trip as we were there to explore. They have a small seating area in reception where you can buy drinks but it isn’t a proper ‘bar’ area with tables or stools etc so it’s not really worth having a drink there when you’ve got the whole of York to explore.
Finally on a facilities-type note, we were able to bag-drop when we got there and the morning that we were leaving too as we checked out about 11am but didn’t actually leave York until about 2pm so this was really helpful.
Price
As I said, this stay was completely paid for by ourselves and we had two nights for just over £200, I booked one directly with them for £100 over email and another was on Hotels.com for about £115 I believe! This is a good rate for a boutique city centre hotel, I’ve definitely paid around £150 a night in Leeds and other Northern cities so I thought the price was totally worth it.
Overall I’d definitely stay here again but I’d book direct with them as they also had offers for free bottles of Prosecco if you booked directly on their site, something I wasn’t offered over the email booking unfortunately! Probably because they were vexed I’d already booked via Hotels.com for the first room. We decided to add on another night a few weeks after booking the first one – hence the two bookings! The only thing that I would say is to make sure you ask for a ground or first floor rooms if you don’t like a low ceiling as I didn’t enjoy the lower ground room as much as the other – personal preference but I just thought it was much nicer with the higher ceilings and more natural light.
