The Cowdray Arms — Restaurant in Mid Sussex

I am very sad to write this review but I feel it should be voiced. We booked our Christmas work party back in October last year and paid a £20 deposit per head. Unfortunately 4 days before the party covid struck and we agreed with the pub to hold onto our deposit, and we would postpone our party and re book when we could find a new date that suited everyone.

Fast forward to last week, we set a date and emailed the pub with a date. I was shocked to receive an email this morning from management stating that they would not honour our booking, or refund our deposit as we did not book in soon enough. At no point was a time frame for re booking communicated to me - verbally or via email. In fact the emails at the time of postponing were all very pleasant and understanding of our situation and said to get in touch when we could in the New Year. Of course if we had been aware we needed to re book within a certain time, we would have done.

I asked for the owner to call me to hopefully come to some kind of agreement/compromise/explain we had no idea we had to re book within a certain amount of time, and soon after I had the utter displeasure of speaking to Will. In my opinion, he was rude, spoke over me the entire time, condescending and just incredibly unpleasant and aggressive.

I asked why we were never told of an 'expiry date' and pointed out that a member of his team could have reached out to us to get us booked in, but to no avail unfortunately. This pub has kept our money, and has given us no chance to ever re book.

It's a real shame as we would have come and spent above and beyond our deposit value and probably booked to come for our Christmas party this year, but we will never step foot in this pub again until it has changed ownership.

We are a small business and this was something we were very much looking forward to!

I will be communicating all of this with Hall...

We booked three nights at the end of October 2022 - but would have left earlier if there was a short notice alternative available.||The room is in a separate building in the garden of the pub. The room itself has been renovated, but the building is completely damp - so all the brickwork is wet. This means it is musty and mouldy in the room. You can smell and see that. There is only one small window that cannot be opened completely. It is dark in the room, so you need light even during the day. Minor issue: The light from the fire alarm is very bright.| |We had dinner there the first night. The burger served was topped with lettuce leaves that anyone else would have thrown in the organic waste bin. There was no apology, and nothing was offered. Weird attitude. ||After the first night in the worst air imaginable, we went to breakfast. That was allright. ||In the evening we went out for dinner (different place) and when we came back we found that there was no housekeeping. Coffee cups dirty, no coffee powder refilled, bed not made, simply nothing. We had never experienced that before! ||The second night we sat down on the terrace for a while, bought a non-alcoholic beer at the bar, my husband had found German beer in a shop nearby, which he drank on the terrace. Then an employee came and grumbled at us that we can't drink beer from elsewhere here. No hello, no introduction. We explained to her that we were staying here overnight (our open room door was a whole two metres away). She didn't care, she insisted that we could only drink the beer in the room. ||Hospitable? Rather not. And given the mouldy and musty state of the room, probably a health risk. ||Moreover, the accommodation is right between two busy roads. ||Not to be...

Meant to be a lovely Wedding Anniversary treat. Sadly we had awful customer service when they delivered the wrong main meal and we were made to feel we'd ordered it wrong. We weren't told what was hapenning, so just sat waiting for an update, without asking if we'd like a drink (glasses had been empty a while.) I basically sat watching my husband eat his dinner feeling awkward. When I did get the correct order delivered after 5 minutes (leading me to think this can't be great quality if it can be made so quickly) the quality was very poor, the chicken looked burnt (told that's how it looks because its been grilled) and not as the menu suggested it would be lemon and thyme infused chicken burger or how the website would have you believe the food is 'award winning'. Nothing award winning about this burger. Nothing gastro or different about it, a dollop of mayo and some raw onion added and therefore completely overpriced. So disappointing. The other diners looked happy in the full restaurant area which on arrival we were told was full so sat in the bar area despite booking. I can only think we weren't as important as the larger tables, or that the staff couldn't cope with the numbers. Perhaps the larger tables got all the quality food and service. Sadly not a positive experience for us. The Manager said 'we'll have to agree to disagree' after I made a complaint. Very defensive attitude. We won't be returning or...