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RAC SMALL HOTEL OF THE YEAR

January 1999

It is often said that small is beautiful, but no one can lay greater claim on the phrase than Tony Barnfield, chef/proprietor of The Nurse’s Cottage, the three-bedroom guest-house and newly-opened Garden Room Restaurant in the New Forest village of Sway.

The recent presentation of a silver salver by the RAC, naming the business Small Hotel of the Year in Southern England, gave Tony the opportunity to reflect (literally!) on a year of unique achievement. In the past twelve months, The Nurse’s Cottage was listed for the first time in the Michelin and Which? Hotel Guides, the Southern Tourist Board named it B&B of the Year in Central Southern England, and Tony found himself in the AA’s Top 20 Landladies of the Year.

The awards have brought not only press coverage and features on radio and television (including Sky News, reportedly seen as far away as Australia), but also increased business. “Since June, when we first opened the restaurant on a limited scale to non-residents,” says Tony, “business has increased by over a quarter. Following reorganisation before Christmas, we now have the grand total of six tables for dinner (which still makes us pretty small and beautiful), and we look to fill them seven nights a week, certainly once the main tourist season begins around Easter.”

This time last year, Tony ran the business almost single-handed; now, he has a staff of 11 part-timers, many of them teenagers, and 2 more are to be taken on to help with Sunday lunch, a new venture for the Cottage from 31 January.

“We cannot hope to match the major awards of last year,” says Tony, “but I have just heard from the AA that I have again been nominated for the AA Landlady title, so watch this space!”

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