Hadley & Forsyth, Savannah

We arrived under a tunnel of live oaks dripping Spanish moss, the kind of Savannah street that makes you slow the car without meaning to. Hadley & Forsyth occupies two Italianate mansions from the 1860s, joined behind their matching stoops so cleverly you only notice the seam from the garden. Inside it is dim and resinous, beeswax and old paper, a grandfather clock keeping time in the hall. Forsyth Park is a block away, its great white fountain visible between the trunks, and the historic squares unspool north from the door. The city's famous, faintly gothic romance is here in full, candlelight and shadow and a hush that feels a century deep.

The room

Our room sat on the parlour floor of the eastern house, with fourteen-foot ceilings, a working marble mantel and tall windows that opened onto the oaks. Heart-pine floors creaked agreeably underfoot, dressed with a worn antique rug, and the bed was a dark mahogany half-tester hung with unlined linen. The mood was collected-over-decades, botanical prints, a wall of foxed portraits, a decanter of bourbon on the secretary desk. The bathroom was a graceful conversion of a former dressing room, clawfoot tub, hexagon marble, a brass shower that took a moment to warm. It was the kind of room that rewards reading late by lamplight.

Savannah does melancholy beauty better than anywhere, and this is a hotel that has made a whole mood of it.The Suite Edit

Service & food

The staff move at a Savannah pace, gracious, a little theatrical, never rushed, and they clearly relish the house's air of faded grandeur. Breakfast arrives as a Southern spread in the garden room: cheese grits, country ham, biscuits with sorghum, chicory coffee in silver pots. The undisputed star is the library bar, a double-height room lined floor to ceiling with books and lit almost entirely by candles, where a quietly expert bartender mixes a smoky old fashioned and pours local wine until late. There is no formal restaurant, but the bar's charcuterie and oysters, plus the city's tables nearby, more than suffice.

The verdict

Hadley & Forsyth is for lovers of atmosphere, the reader, the romantic, the traveller who finds a faintly haunted old house more comforting than a brand-new one. Couples and solo wanderers will be happiest. The honest caveat is that authenticity comes with creaks: the two-hundred-year-old structure means narrow staircases, no lift to some floors, the odd temperamental tap and floors you can hear your neighbour cross. If you want everything crisp, level and modern, this is not your house. If you want Savannah distilled, it very much is.