Sale may be on for Ston Easton Park
Ston Easton Park country house hotel near Bath may at last be close to a sale after languishing on the market for almost a year because the owners were not convinced that interested buyers would give the hotel the care it deserved.
The four-star, 22-bedroom hotel is one of a handful of well-maintained Grade I Palladian buildings in the UK.
The owners, Peter and Christine Smedley, bought the property in 1977 as their home and converted it into a hotel five years later.
General manager Richard Harrison said he hoped the current talks would satisfy the owners and, if so, the hotel might change hands within two weeks. It was put on the market with a price tag of £3.75m to £4m.
National newspaper reports recently named the Malaysian investors behind Grandiose Management as potential buyers of the hotel. But Ian Shelton, senior manager of the company's three properties - which include Lords of the Manor in Upper Slaughter, Gloucestershire - said Ston Easton was "a little bit too formal" to fit the company's profile of country house hotels.
