New Park Hotel

A Hotel With a Stage In It

Most hotels are engineered for quiet. The New Park is not, and the departure is deliberate: live music and stand-up comedy run on the premises, which makes this somewhere between a hotel and a small venue. If you have come to Carmarthen for a night out, you can have it downstairs and then climb the stairs to bed without so much as looking for a taxi.

If you have come for silence, be told now — one of the other Carmarthen hotels on this page will suit you far better, and there is no sense discovering that at eleven o’clock on a Friday.

The numbers, plainly

Seventy-three guests have rated the New Park, and the average comes out at 7 out of ten. That is the most modest score among the Carmarthen hotels we carry, and this page would be worth less to you if it pretended otherwise. Rooms open at about £85. The building stands on Lammas Street, a five-minute walk from Carmarthen Castle.

The bedrooms

Each has a bathroom with a shower, a flat-screen television, a desk, a wardrobe, a hairdryer and complimentary toiletries; family rooms are available. Given what goes on beneath them, the useful detail is that the rooms are soundproofed — and it is cleanliness and comfort that guests single out in their reviews, which for a hotel at this price is the right pair of things to be praised for. Carpet underfoot, heating that works, no smoking anywhere in the building, an iron if you need one, and the room made up every day.

What happens downstairs

Live music and comedy nights are a fixture rather than an occasional novelty, and there is a seating area from which to enjoy them. It gives the hotel a character none of the more decorous establishments in town possess, and for the right guest that is precisely the appeal. Whichever camp you fall into, it is worth asking what is on the night you are staying.

Sport, if that is your evening instead

Tennis and squash courts can be arranged nearby, along with guided walks and bowling. None of it is on site and most of it carries a charge, but the hotel will point you in the right direction.

The town at the end of the road

Lammas Street is the old approach into Carmarthen from the west, so everything worth seeing is a short walk away. Five minutes to the castle. A little further to the covered market, which is as good as any in the country and where half the town seems to do its shopping on a Saturday.

Further afield: Llansteffan Castle stands over the Tywi estuary thirteen kilometres away, WWT Llanelli’s wetlands are thirty-one kilometres off, and Folly Farm — a dependable answer to a wet day with children — lies thirty-six kilometres west. Cardiff Airport is a hundred kilometres distant.

An honest word on the score

Seven out of ten from seventy-three people is not a hotel firing on all cylinders, and pretending otherwise would be doing you a disservice. What the reviews consistently praise is the cleanliness of the rooms and the position; what they are quieter about is polish. If you want faultless, book the Y Seren or the Boar’s Head from this same page and pay a little more. If you want a clean, central, soundproofed room and a night out you can walk upstairs from, this does that job and does it for £85.

Being straight with you

Free WiFi, soundproofed family rooms, live entertainment, a central address and a five-minute walk to the castle, from about £85. No parking is listed at the hotel, so drivers should plan on one of the town’s car parks. Book it for the position and the atmosphere. Do not book it expecting a hush.