The George in Rye

Rooms

The 34 rooms (12 of them new in 2011) combine 21st-century cool with retro exuberance in a witty and wonderful way. You'll find plasma screen TVs and contemporary shades (dove-blue, warm grey) alongside antique mirrors and rolltop bathtubs. Original features like wooden beams have been kept and unusual ones added – tapestries, corduroy sofas, elegant chaise longues – courtesy of Katie's previous life as a film prop buyer. Beds are a dream, with thick-sprung mattresses, tall piles of fluffy pillows and duvets in Italian Frette linen.

Rooms are located either in the warren-like hallways of the original 16th-century inn or in a wing across the herringbone-brick courtyard. We quite liked this latter arrangement – having an entrance that opened to the outdoors made our room feel like a cottage.

Superior Doubles are compact, but still perfectly functional and comfortable. The smallest of these are classified as Queens and come with a friendlier price tag. Luxury Doubles are larger, some with four-poster beds; one has baby-blue booked-filled headboard, another a mirrored armoire and pair of white leather chairs, while our Junior Suite had a cool art deco dressing table spray-painted in frosty silver.

We also had a swagger-size, marble-topped bathroom with a walk-in shower area, whose twin chrome power showers were affixed to the ceiling in beam-me-up style. Plenty of fluffy towels and Aveda beauty products, though we could find nothing bubbly to throw in the big free-standing tub.

Other touches we liked: the wooden box storing herbal teas and proper coffee, the heart-shaped baby pillows filled with lavender, and the Matisse and Diane Arbus books by the sofa. All the rooms have a Tivoli clock-radio and flat-screen LCD TV/DVD player with DVDs available to order. None of them has a mini-bar, but that's no hardship, with the convivial George Tap a short wander away.