I have stayed here and I have eaten here - when it's good it can be very good so it was a logical place to consider when I was looking to get married.
Unfortunately it started to fly downhill in my estimation when I visited with my fiancee - now wife.
We are demanding guests - terrible people it would seem as we wanted some truly unreasonable things.
We wanted:
1 Hot food for our guests (as opposed to luke warm or getting cold)
2 We wanted the plates to be hot to keep the food warm
3 We asked for enough serving staff to ensure that the food was served at roughly the same time so one table wasn't starting their first course while another was finishing main.
4 We asked for experienced pro's to serve, not 16 year old spotty herberts with poor food hygeine that don't know one end of a fork from another.
All of the above were seen as unreasonable and the hotel refused point blank to guarantee them.
There was also the price - laughingly similar to the 4 star character hotel in Swansea.
BUT unlike that hotel whose every room is as near pristine and clean as you can get, Norton House has some serious refurbishment to undertake.
They have started and these rooms are really nice (fantastic job actually) but the non refurbished ones are really nasty.
They were immoveable on price - even when considering the rooms we couldn't give to our relatives or freinds.
It became very clear that they didn't want to deal with us as we came near to the end of the meeting.
In follow-on phone calls it was even more obvious that we were too much trouble (wanting our wedding to be perfect and all) so we decided not to use them.
I have just re-read the above and I think it makes me look like a skinflint - trying to get a discount. Well I am a bit of one but I don't mind paying if I get VALUE for my £££s
The wedding venue we used was not inexpensive but the value was there. We had a sit down 4 course gourmet meal for 77, a live band, a solo singer, a disco, a video games room, a scalextric room, an old fashioned sweetie bar - we even had a 10 minute jet fighter aerobatic display over the bay (though we organised that and I only mention so as not to look like a skinflint and also because it was just soooooooooooooooooo cool).
The wedding was just fab in the end and the other hotel catered for our guests superbly well - and did guarantee and write into the contract everything that we wanted.
So my advice?
Eat here - and if it's a good day the food will be great as will the service.
If it's a bad day both will be OK (ish).
Ask for a newly refurbished room and you will not feel fleeced - get an old one and you will.
In my grading I have graded for the average of what I have experienced on a number of visits.
In my opinion Norton House will get there but it is not there yet - particularly with such strong competition from the likes of Morgans just up the road.
And now dear reader - it's over to you.
- Norton Hotel Swansea
