Black Lion Hotel Richmond

Room access via four flights of stairs one without hand rails and a sharp turn at the end of the top flight with very narrow treads that challenged safety.
Room uncomfortably hot, due to the weather being unusually hot, but the ventilation was restricted to small windows and a very small skylight. I was not aware the hotel had rooms so high or I would have requested a lower room. My wife and I are in our late eighties and found accessing the room, particularly when carrying cases, very difficult.
The bathroom had a shower over the bath. No grab rail, No non-slip mat. Water pressure on the shower so high that it was difficult preventing it spraying over the whole room. The high pressure also made it difficult to set a suitable temperature. Just a micro movement of a tape would swing the temperature from cool to scalding. This facility was so difficult that on the second morning we abandoned the shower knowing we had a walk-in shower at our next stop.
This was all disappointing as we had a very pleasant stay in a different room at the hotel on a previous visit

Shower was very fierce. Relatively small food portions, and we don’t eat big portions.

Slightly hard to locate at first as off main square down a no through traffic zone. Parking was at the back accessed a different way. Also short of staff on 2nd morning at breakfast so kept running out of items I.e. bread, knives, spoons. Would not put me off staying again though.

The toilet seat in the room was broken as was the door handle. The room was not clean or well kept. They forgot to refresh our room on the 2nd day. The evening meal took nearly an hour before it arrived and was then barely edible. Staff were absent and we waited over 10 minutes just to get a drink. One member of staff said 'It's a nightmare' when he was serving us. No apology or refund offered. The breakfasts are awful with just bread and cereal their 'continental breakfast' and when the cook finally came out of the kitchen the first day after 10 minutes of waiting, the food he cooked was swimming in oil. On the second day we went down and the breakfast room was still locked half an hour after breakfast was supposed to have started. We asked for a bacon sandwich and were given 2 slices of defrosted bread, greasy bacon and some butter cubes and were expected to make it ourselves. The staff (apart from a manager) were not visible and she was obviously under significant pressure. Given how much we paid we feel very let down by the hotel indeed and cannot recommend them at all. We chose it because of its location and its rating on Booking.com so also feel let down by booking.com and will now have to really consider whether to use/rely on the website for future stays.

Room was OK but couldn't open windows properly and it was quite warm

No horizontal surface in bathroom. Sponge bag and hair brush had to go on floor! Confusion over not being offered breakfast for 2nd day, but staff did say they'd do us one specially.

Cooked Breakfast was very poor - Hash Browns and Sausages cremated, I also asked if I could have scrambled or poached egg v fried, and was told this is not possible, as the table next to me was served poached eggs on toast.

Food in pub was very standard

Smells strobgly of meat in the bar. Not great if you're a vegan but since most people are hair to abuse and exploit animals, I'm sure nobody else will mind.

Nothing

It was ok

Nothing to dislike

Ideally, we would have liked fruit and yogurt offered for breakfast, but the cooked option was nicely done. Shower cap would be welcome to allow for fixed shower head