We rented Lyndhurst House for my sisters hen weekend last December. We had a party of 22 and as such our options were limited, but we found Lyndhurst online and it looked the perfect venue in the perfect location.
Upon our arrival impressions were good, but unfortunately it didn't take long for us to encounter problems. We arrived after dark and the first issue we had was that lighting not working in the games room, not a massive issue for us as we weren't really planning on using it, but the next day I did note that there was a broken glass all over one corner of the room, a good job then we hadn't been exploring the house bare foot.
As we started to get set up for the rest of our guests arriving we noticed more and more issues;
Some of the soft furnishings were horribly grubby, we had to bring the blankets down from bedrooms to further cover the furniture to make it presentable.
The kitchen sink was leaking, causing a slip hazard.
The general maintenance and cleanliness of the whole house could have been a lot better, there were stained sheets in some of the rooms and one of the front bedroom windows was very loose and banged all night.
Our biggest issue was the dining room. We specifically chose this property for it having a dining room which seated 18, with an extension to 22. This is grossly mis-leading. The main table fits only 10 of the chairs provided (which, incidently were filthy) 12 at a push with people sitting on corners. We found the extension mentioned on the website, this gained us space for a maximum 3 extra, but by now the table stretched the full length of the dining room and there was no room to push chairs in and out on the ends. I thought I must be missing something so I called owner. He was totally unhelpful, and if I'm honest, quite rude, he implied that I was 'making it up' by keep insisting that he had previously sat 22 round it. It was massively frustrating. I asked he could come and show me how he'd made it work, he said he would come Saturday morning. In the meanwhile we brought in the garden table and sent an SOS to guests to bring camping tables. It's a good job we did as the owner didn't come on the Sat am, nor was he in touch at all (until we had to chase him for our deposit)
We made it work, with camping tables, garden table and a 'U' shape out into the hall, but by no means ideal and certainly by no means thanks to the owner. What a shame, such a beautiful property, but not clean and such very poor service.