The best spa hotels in the UK 2023: Where to go for a relaxing staycation

Get some R&R without the bother of leaving the country, with these top picks from Ianthe Butt

South Lodge in Horsham, West Sussex, features an indoor infinity pool, outdoor hydrotherapy pool, and a wild-swimming pond

(South Lodge)

For a top-to-toe wellbeing boost, some time out from the daily grind or a slow-paced getaway with your nearest and dearest, there’s nothing quite like a spa break for a recharge and reset. For those who don’t fancy the faff of heading abroad for an R&R fix, there are plenty of exceptional spa hotels right here in the UK.

Whether its swimming laps or lazing poolside, lavender-scented thermal suites, taking hydrotherapy soaks in a secret garden, or indulging in high-tech massages and bespoke facials, these pampering properties all have serious spa credentials.

Come evening, you’ll find plenty of fine dining on offer at most spa hotels – some even have a Michelin star or two – to round off a busy day of being pampered.

From blowout country house breaks to city-slick urban retreats, we’ve rounded up 12 of the best UK spa hotels, so, get ready to don a spa robe and hit relax.

The best spa hotels in the UK are:

• Best hotel for a Roman spa experience: The Gainsborough Bath Spa
• Best spa hotel for golfers: Galgorm Spa and Golf Resort
• Best eco-friendly spa hotel: The Scarlet
• Best modern spa hotel: Rudding Park
• Best spa hotel for a romantic escape: Chewton Glen

Best hotel for countryside cosiness: Dormy House Hotel and Spa

Location: The Cotswolds

The boutique hotel has a candlelit indoor infinity pool and hydrotherapy hot tub

(Dormy House Hotel & Spa)

If cosy is what you crave, Dormy House is the one. This handsome 17th-century farmhouse-turned-39-room-boutique-hotel just outside Broadway village sits inside the 400-acre Farncombe Estate and serves up Cotswolds conviviality in such abundance, it’s impossible not to leave with a spring in your step. Flagstone-floored lounges with sofas draped in blankets by log fires invite guests to kick off their wellies and stop for a cuppa. It makes for a lovely spot to retreat to after yomps to Broadway Tower.

At the House Spa, there’s a candlelit indoor infinity pool, a hydrotherapy hot tub fringed by pots of violet fauxliage, a gym, and thermal suite with Finnish cabin, salt steam room, lavender-infused number and experience shower, which mimics being caught in a rainforest downpour in the loveliest of ways.

A raft of treatments, using Temple Spa products, range from a sugar buff scrub and warm oil massage combo to full body massages, using a technique developed by expert Beata Aleksandrowicz, which employs firm, slow strokes for unwind-to-the-core relaxation. Ask for spa therapist Meg Riach – if Michelin gave out stars for massages, she’d be a shoo-in. Also on offer are mani-pedis, flotation tank experiences and therapist-free ‘wave touch’ massages – a lie-on waterbed with choose-your-own-strength jets.

As well as a spa cafe with sun terrace, there’s the slow-food Back Garden restaurant for comforting truffle and parmesan cream gnocchi and apple terrine with cinnamon brioche. For slumbering, bedrooms blend Scandi-style interiors with wooden beams, floral fabric walls, and glinting roll-top bathtubs. While the in-room Temple Spa toiletries smell amazing, a switch to refillables feels overdue.

Prices: Doubles from £309, B&B, including spa access. Spa days from £105pp

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Best hotel for a Roman spa experience: The Gainsborough Bath Spa

Location: Bath

For history buffs, these Georgian buildings founded on ancient thermal waters are a real treat

(The Gainsborough Bath Spa)

As famed for its honey-hued Georgian buildings as the ancient thermal waters it was founded on, Bath makes for a brilliant wellness break. The place to bed down is the Gainsborough Bath Spa, which has 99 bedrooms with monochrome palettes and is the only hotel with a spa directly fed by Bath’s mineral-rich spring water. A handful of spa bedrooms even have the thermal water piped straight into roll-top bathtubs, while for blowout group getaways, there’s a four-floor Georgian townhouse set adjacent to the main hotel.

The Spa Village’s centrepiece is a dramatic mosaic-tiled thermal pool set underneath a glass atrium and surrounded by Romanesque columns. Offering a more boutique experience than the city’s popular Thermae Baths, the Gainsborough Spa also has two smaller soaking pools, an ice alcove and relaxation terrace, which form an invigorating self-guided bathing circuit. Unknotting aromatherapy, Swedish essential oil and thermal candle massages are on offer in 10 treatment rooms, alongside rejuvenating lime and ginger scrubs – plus the gym and complimentary weekend yoga classes will keep active types happy.

Best spa hotel for a rural retreat: Lime Wood

Location: New Forest, Hampshire

The tree-level Herb House spa nails serenity

(Lime Wood)

Set in the New Forest National Park, where wild ponies meander through woodland and violet-tinged heather scrub, Lime Wood is the ultimate rural retreat. The 13th-century lodge, transformed into a country house hotel with glorious grounds, has lounges with roaring fires, an Italian restaurant helmed by Angela Hartnett and Luke Holder and 33 rooms with botanical artwork, antique furniture and bloom-festooned cushions.

Facilities at the calming, three-level Herb House spa nail serenity, with a 16m indoor lap pool (floor-to-ceiling glass windows mean front crawl comes with a side of dappled sunlight and forest views), two hydropools, an outdoor hot pool set underneath olive trees and 10 treatment rooms. The spa menu includes massages using seaweed-infused VOYA or Bamford products, reflexology sessions and OPI mani-pedis. Plus, Lime Wood’s the only spa in England to offer Ground treatments, created by wellness expert Peigin Crowley, this series of rituals targets the likes of anxiety and hormone change, combines Gua Sha, breathwork, cold-stone therapy and lymphatic drainage. Personal trainers are on hand in the Technogym to ramp up fitness regimes, there are energetic aqua resistance sessions in the pool, plus pilates and yoga in the herb-filled rooftop garden. Afterwards, there’s healthy grub – freshly pressed greens and ginger juices and seasonal soups – on offer at spa restaurant Raw and Cure.

Price: Doubles from £405, room only, including spa access. Spa days from £175pp

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Best spa hotel for golfers: Galgorm Spa & Golf Resort

Location: Ballymena, Country Antrim

This dog-friendly hotel offers everything from business- and Scandi-style bedrooms to rustic cabins

(Galgorm)

Surrounded by 380 acres of parkland by the tranquil River Maine, 40 minutes from Belfast, the atmosphere at the 154-room Galgorm is refreshingly relaxed and jolly (it has a 500-strong gin library for one thing). Accommodation – all dog-friendly – ranges from business-style bedrooms to Scandi-style cottages and rustic log cabins. There are four restaurants, including laidback AA Rosette-awarded Italian joint Fratellli plus rousing live music each night at Gillies Grill.

The property’s award-winning Spa Village is one of Europe’s largest thermal spas, with a whopping six acres in which to bliss out, including a trio of gardens (alpine, walled and riverside) and a raft of facilities, including an outdoor infinity hydrotherapy pool, riverside hot tubs, an indoor pool, snow cabin, salt room, aroma grotto and herb caldarium. Massages use Aromatherapy Associates oil or CBD-infused OTO products, plus there’s an only-available-at Galgorm iDome Detox Therapy – a touchless treatment that uses colour and plasma therapy to rejuvenate skin.

For post-relaxation fuel, order poke bowls and virgin watermelon margaritas at timber-dome restaurant Elements. It’s a good pick for golfers, as there’s a par-72 championship course on the grounds of the nearby Galgorm Castle Estate, a six-hole pitch and putt, and a golf academy.

Best eco-friendly spa hotel: The Scarlet

Location: Cornwall

This seaside break is a breath of fresh air for the soul

(The Scarlet)

A seaside break is an instant reviver, and the adults-only Scarlet, with its cliffside setting above Mawgan Porth’s butterscotch sands, eco-architecture and wonderful spa, is a breath of fresh air for the soul. The 39 rooms – all pale wooden floorboards, decorated in mossy green and dusky blues inspired by wildflowers and sea mosses – each have a sea view, be it full-facing or from an upper-level sitting room.

Popular with couples, the spa is heavy on wild-at-heart romance, with blue-on-blue seascape panoramas from the indoor pool, outdoor natural pool (a bracing, freshwater number, filtered by a living reed bed system) and two clifftop hot tubs. Ayurvedic treatments, including Shirodhara and Mukhabyanga facial massage, offer a taste of longer, four-hour ‘journeys’ (solo, couples, pregnancy) alongside hot herb and oat-filled poultice massages and Tula facials. Hands-on DIY hammam experiences for two, which involve slathering one another with mineral mud and an aromatic scrub atop a heated ceramic bed, are a hoot, and leave skin silky-smooth.

Afterwards, laze in slumber-inducing hanging canvas pods, do outdoor yoga and tai chi, or head out surfing. A visit to the restaurant is a must – it’s overseen by chef Jack Clayton, known for his focus on sustainable, responsibly sourced cuisine, and good-natured sommelier Nick Bryant. Pick from seven-course fine-dining suppers or afternoon cream teas; just be sure to layer jam before clotted cream, in keeping with the Cornish tradition.

Price: Doubles from £245, B&B, including spa access. Day spa from £125pp

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Best modern spa hotel: Rudding Park

Location: Harrogate

With two golf courses, 300 acres of gardens and a cinema, there’s much more to do than just relax

(Rudding Park)

Historic Rudding Park, a quick drive from former spa town Harrogate, will suit spa junkies looking for a retreat with a modern, unstuffy vibe. The Georgian Hall-turned-90-room-hotel has comfortable rooms with colour-pop touches, 300 acres of gardens, a cinema, two golf courses and 3 AA Rosette Horto, where the likes of dainty Japanese seven-spice tempura courgettes and flower-strewn desserts are served.

It’s the innovative spa, fed in part by natural spring waters, that’s the real masterstroke. Alongside an indoor pool, juniper log sauna, rasul (for mud masks and scrubs), nail studio and gym, there are audio meditation pods, an AV relaxation room and Mandala colour therapy zone. Outside, on the shrub-filled rooftop, there’s even more: a hydrotherapy pool, steam room, a tranquillity space with heated Evo loungers, glass-fronted sauna with astonishing panoramas of the Yorkshire countryside, sunlight therapy room and oxygen pod. Treatments run the gamut from Natura Bissé facials to hot stone massages, and spa rates include a daily Aufguss session – 15-minute sauna rituals where an Aufguss master uses water, essential oils and clever towel movements to circulate the heat to lift endorphins. The property also caters for those with accessibility needs, with level access across the spa, a pool lift for indoor and hydro pools, and an adapted treatment room and accessible shower/changing room.

Best spa hotel for a romantic escape: Chewton Glen

Location: New Forest, Hampshire

If you can’t choose between all the treatments on offer, book a slot and the therapist wil craft something bespoke

(Chewton Glen)

In 1990, long before it became de rigueur, Chewton Glen was one of the first country house hotels to create a purpose-built spa, and it has been winning accolades ever since. The straight-out-of-Austen hotel sits in 130 acres of grounds on the fringe of the New Forest National Park, and many ingredients used at the Dining Room come from the kitchen garden. Rooms range from traditional affairs with mallard-print cushions, mahogany furniture and rose colour palettes to high-in-the-canopy tree house suites with balcony hot tubs.

The 1,350sq m spa has a 17m Roman-style indoor lap pool, a hydrotherapy pool, outdoor whirlpool and cold drench showers. On the spa menu are Jessica mani-pedis, Mii make-up sessions and oil massages. Can’t decide? Book a slot and the therapist will craft something bespoke. Also on offer are brand new body rituals using CBD brand OTO products, which are tailored to ramp up energy levels or rebalance, as required. Mindful alkaline buffets are served in the Pool Bar, for those watching their PH balance, and junior spa treatments, a nine-hole par three golf course, dance studio, tennis courts, and a cookery school – recently taken over by Chef Gerard Molloy – make Chewton a good family pick.

Best spa hotel for beautiful views: South Lodge

Location: Horsham, West Sussex

The Botanica restaurant serves up delicious plant-based food

(South Lodge)

Want a spa break with a horticultural hit? This ivy-covered, buttermilk-stone Jacobean country pile in West Sussex has it covered, with 93 acres of beech and oak woodland, rhododendron-filled ornamental gardens and breathtaking South Downs panoramas. The old-world main house – all ornate peacock ceiling carvings, dark wood panelling and 18th-century oil portraits – also has excellent restaurants Camellia and The Pass, overseen by Ben Wilkinson. Suites are relaxing spaces with velvet throws, fireplaces, bold striped wallpaper, mosaic-tiled bathrooms and hydrotherapy tubs.

The real serenity, however, is at the 4,087sq m, green oak-clad, meadow-roofed spa, which blends into the South Downs scenery beautifully. There’s plenty to keep swimmers happy, with a trio of dipping spots – an indoor infinity pool, outdoor hydrotherapy number, and a back-to-nature 18m wild swimming pond too. Unwind-in-an-instant body massages use bespoke products and take place in nature-inspired treatment rooms, there’s a beauty bar for glam Jessica mani-pedis and Mii make-up and brows, a spin studio and gym, and plant-based food – such as the Wasted Burger, made from leftover vegetable pulp – on offer at the Botanica restaurant.

Best spa hotel for glamour: Beaverbrook Hotel and Spa

Location: Leatherhead, Surrey

Beaverbrook is all razzle-dazzle with rooms full of absract art prints and antiques

(Beaverbrook Hotel & Spa)

Not many spas are akin to immersive art, but that’s exactly the case at Beaverbrook’s Coach House Health Club and Spa. Offering a zeitgeist-y foil to the 19th-century Victorian mansion and its sprawling Surrey Hills grounds, the spa’s vivid stained-glass ceiling, designed by artist Brian Clarke, makes you feel as though you’re wrapped up in a rainbow. Wellness here focuses on the power of nature, with a roster including AS Apothecary oil massages, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, IV vitamin infusions, Therapi facials and osteopathy as well as a calendar of experiences ranging from Celtic druidry to tai chi and abdominal therapy.

The pretty indoor pool is a delight – with a design that looks as though there are flowers bobbing on the water’s surface – plus there’s a splash pool, English Bath House, thermal suite, gym, and relaxation room.

Spoiling spa aside, Beaverbrook is all polished razzle-dazzle – in keeping with the spirit of its former owner, press baron Lord Beaverbrook, who was renowned for his Gatsby-esque parties. Some of the bedrooms, decked out with abstract art prints and antiques, are named after Lord Beaverbrook’s pals, including Rudyard Kipling and Elizabeth Taylor. Evenings can be spent in the cinema, feasting on sushi at the Japanese Grill or rustic Mediterranean at the Garden House, before lemon, ginger ale and peach Spitfire Collins cocktails at Art Deco style Sir Frank’s Bar.

Price: Doubles from £505, room-only, including spa access. Spa days from £295pp

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Best spa hotel in the big city: Corinthia

Location: Charing Cross, London

The five-star hotel has an unrivalled riverside setting and is home to a stunning spa

(Corinthia)

Moments from the Thames, and a hop, skip and a jump from Trafalgar Square, this five-star hotel has an unrivalled riverside setting, and is home to ESPA Life at Corinthia. Spread across four floors, the 3,300sq m spa is all high-drama Game of Thrones sultriness. Curved, gold corridors and a marble staircase descend to a thermal floor, where midnight black Italian marble rubs up against a vitality pool lit by a flickering fireplace. As well as a mosaic-tiled steam room, ice fountain and 9m stainless steel swimming pool – embedded with golden lights that create swooshing patterns as you swim – there’s a roomy, amphitheatre-style glass-walled sauna soundtracked by classical music. Even the changing rooms are a thing of beauty – the women’s have heated marble loungers, a sauna and steam room, the men’s a sauna and tepidarium.

The range of expert-led treatments – performed in 17 pods – is second to none. ESPA therapies – including a full body vitality massage, featuring a warm rose quartz crystal scalp massage, ‘natural facelift’ facials inspired by Japanese Kobido – reflexology, and Traditional Chinese Medicine treatments are just a handful of what’s on offer. The cutting-edge gym has small group personal training sessions led by AMP coaches, and a Daniel Galvin Hair Salon ensures locks look as good as the swish surrounds. Plus, just opened is a new partnership with The London Regenerative Institute, for consultations with regenerative medicine practitioners for the likes of oxygen therapies and aesthetic treatments in a dedicated Lab Room.

As for the rest of the hotel? Expect a wow-factor glass dome ceiling and Baccarat chandelier, two occasion restaurants – Kerridge’s Bar and Grill and European-style brasserie The Northall – sexy cocktail bar Velvet, and bedrooms that channel smart London residences, with leather furniture and Calacatta marble bathrooms.

Best sustainable spa hotel: Titanic Spa

Location: Huddersfield

With single-use plastics banned and energy-efficient appliances, this is one of the greener options

(Titanic Spa)

For a pampering getaway rooted in sustainability smarts, this eco-spa in the Pennines is the one to book. Housed inside a beautifully restored 20th-century textile mill in Huddersfield, it’s powered by solar photovoltaic roof panels and uses its own natural borehole for water. Single-use plastic is banned, appliances are energy-efficient, and Titanic is working towards becoming carbon neutral too.

The well-equipped spa has a 15m indoor pool, given a gentle glow by blush rose lighting, as well as a heat and ice circuit, including herbal infusion and aromatherapy rooms, crystal steam bath, sauna, foot baths, ice room, plunge pool and experience showers – plus a sunken hot tub on the patio for outdoor soaks. While this isn’t a boutique experience (the spa can get quite busy), treatments – ranging from Decleor and Elemis facials and massages to reflexology, reiki and hopi ear candling – are spoiling, and there’s a beanbag-filled relaxation lounge to retreat to afterwards.

Aparthotel-style accommodation – 33 contemporary-looking, one- or two-bed apartments (sleeping up to six with additional sofa beds) with kitchen-dining rooms – in the Titanic’s former mill makes self-catering a breeze.

That said, there’s good grub on offer, with dishes at The Titanic Bistro – such as cumin spiced sweet potato and dal – made using seasonal, locally sourced, organic or Fairtrade ingredients. It’s hard to beat Titanic in terms of value for money; three-hour twilight packages start from £45pp. Another draw? The £199 Green Futures package includes a £38 donation to a local charity that helps to empower young people to create positive environmental change.

Price: Doubles from £179 B&B with spa access. Spa experiences from £45pp. The Green Futures package is from £199pp (Monday to Thursday, including meals, 25-minute body scrub and spa access)

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Best spa hotel for treatment variety: Fairmont Windsor Park

Location: Windsor

The courtyard hydro vitality pool is lovely during sunnier months

(Fairmont Windsor Park)

This ritzy countryside crashpad meets 2500sq m spa opened in late 2021, and swiftly established itself as top of the list for many dedicated spa-goers. While the property’s Jacobean-style exterior is in keeping with its English countryside locale, with 40 acres of gardens next to Windsor Park, interiors are more-is-more opulent. Think mirrored corridors, a triple-height atrium, striking bar with a sunbeam ceiling pattern and a fine-dining restaurant – 1215 – adorned with hand-painted forest murals.

The spa has more of a sanctuary feel, with silvery floral mosaic walls, a 20m indoor pool lined by waterside loungers, and tucked-back daybeds to curl up in. At one end, a Japanese Ashiyu foot ritual bath sits in a bower of everlasting cherry blossom, while, outside, there’s a courtyard hydro vitality pool – lovely during sunnier months. As well as a Himalayan salt room and thermal suite with Finnish sauna, steam room, ice fountain and hot tub, a relaxation room is kitted out with Aeyla weighted blankets to snuggle under. Other flashpoints include a six-person hammam, medi-spa, gym with reformer Pilates studio, padel and tennis courts and a cryotherapy chamber. As well as 18 rooms for treatments using Comfort Zone and La Sultane de Sabana products, there’s a hair salon, Truefitt & Hill barbershop, Nailberry and Evo manicures, as well as osteopathy, physio and homoeopathy services.

Best spa hotel for facilities and food: Pennyhill Park Hotel & Spa

Location: Bagshot, Surrey

After a good soak, enjoy a Michelin-starred restaurant experience

(Pennyhill Park Hotel & Spa)

Another Surrey spa hotspot with oodles of facilities is long-established Pennyhill Park. Ringed by 120 acres of parkland, with a whopping 4,181sq m spa to explore – spa-ing here is a laid-back, all-day affair. As for swims, there’s a pic ’n’ mix of dipping possibilities – from an elegant 25m indoor pool in the columned ballroom, which has music piped underwater, to an 18m outdoor pool and indoor-outdoor hydrotherapy pool, next to a trio of outdoor Canadian-style hot tubs. Another highlight is the fragrant thermal circuit, a mix of saunas, steam rooms and the like at varying temperatures, it includes a fig and vanilla-scented laconium, rose steam room and a Thai basil and eucalyptus-infused herbal sauna to warm up in, as well as drench buckets, an ice igloo, bracing plunge pool for wannabe Wim Hofs, and bubbling foot spa. Despite there being 21 therapy rooms, it’s best to book ahead, as treatments are in hot demand, from Natura Bissé’s famed diamond energy facials to the Comfort Zone pro-sleep ritual using warm oil applied in gentle brushstrokes.

On the whole, the property’s 124 individually styled bedrooms are contemporary and colourful, the most plush have their own spa touches – a private cedar hot tub on the terrace, sunken Roman-style shower or copper roll-top tub. Pennyhill’s also a strong choice for foodie travellers, thanks to Michelin-starred Latymer restaurant, where Steve Smith magics up inventive, modern fine-dining in historic, oak-beamed surrounds.  

Read more of our hotel reviews:

• The best spa hotels in the Cotswolds
• Best boutique London hotels
• The best hotels in Oxford

Read more about UK travel:

• The best boutique hotels in Edinburgh
• Best hotels in Pembrokeshire
• The places you won’t believe are in England