We booked late for a weekend break via the hotel chain website and found that the rate here was better than via the hotel itself.
Room was very well appointed and someone had taken some trouble to ensure best use was made of the space. Given the age of the hotel such refurbishment was pleasant to see.
We ate a la carte in the restaurant and though very busy the service was courteous and prompt. The food was of very high quality and the wine list sufficiently extensive for all tastes.
The wine waiter was perhaps overly speedy when he refilled but that is being picky.
Parking is not a big issue as long as you read and print out the directions from the web site. This slight inconvenience is a small price to pay for a wonderful location.

I'm a little unsure how to rate this hotel as it was very, very good or terrible!
We were staying for a conference and on arrival check-in was very slow but it was busy and we waited patiently. There appeared to be a little confusion with our room number but we were given our key and directed to the second floor.

When we opened the door we were greeted by a pair of feet on the bed and someone in the shower! They had given us somebody elses room! It was highly amusing and we all had a good laugh but I'm glad they were only relaxing! I was shocked by the Management's response of what was an elementary error - no proper apology, just a mumble and a re-allocation of keys.

When my colleague and I arrived at the second room we were greeted by a huge double bed which was lovely except both of us had left our husbands at home and would rather have had singles.

To be fair the hotel did come up promptly to sort out the beds (we had booked twin beds) and gave us a voucher for a glass of champagne in the bar.

To make matters worse, I was so shocked by the double bed I stepped out of the room to talk to my colleague and promptly locked ourselves out!

The lift whilst quaint (gate to pull across before the door shuts) is a pain when you are travelling with suitcases. The gate springs back and traps your case midway between the floor and the lift, you need three hands and that is "sans" children.

The bedroom (once we were in it) was very comfortable and more than adequate. It was small but nicely furnished and the television worked unlike many hotels I've stayed in.

Breakfast was again lovely with prompt service and a nice choice of fruit, yoghurts, pastries or cooked breakfast.

I think the problem with this hotel is that there is no clear chain of command and whilst everyone is friendly and helpful it just appeared there was no rudder keeping the hotel running smoothly. The staff mean well and are genuinely interested in their customers but I think they need more customer service training, especially for when things don't go to plan. We might have found it amusing ending up in someone elses room but there was obviously a security issue here, and I have never experienced this before in the many hotels I have stayed.

The car-park is obviously an issue and although we didn't use it, we witnessed problems with this at Reception.

I liked the hotel, the location is stunning but they have obviously struggled with the natural restrictions of the building. I would recommend it, but go with a sense of humour and a chilled attitude.

My stay at the Abode Exeter came with some weight of expectation, as it had always struck me as rather grand in my days as an impoverished student at Exeter University. Happily my long held dreams of a triumphant return to the city were fulfilled (!) and we had a very pleasant and comfortable night at the hotel.

The hotel was run and staffed on a very professional basis, with a level of service and competency not regularly found outside of the flashier "big city" hotels. By way of example, the cocktail making skills and patter of the barman in the Champagne Bar rather made us wonder why he wasn't making his fortune in Claridges or some such (of course, we arn't complaining). This quality approach was however somewhat limiting when it came to dining at the hotel. The restaurant was very much a "fine dining" experience (or at least purported to be - we didn't eat there), with very high prices to match. Dinner could have been wonderful, but we simply didn't feel we could do the food (and expense) justice after a tiring journey and action packed day in Exeter. We were therefore "forced" to eat elsewhere.

Our room was reasonably small but very comfortable and well appointed. It was also surprisingly quiet, given the hotel's central location.

As other contributors have noted, parking could be a challenge if you do not know Exeter, but having to park a short walk away is a price worth paying to stay in a historic hotel in such a wonderful spot. On which topic, the hotel's greatest strength is its location. I have seen the cathedral countless times but, despite this, the view of the cathedral upon stepping out the hotel still struck me as being very beautiful.

Prior to our stay we were not supplied with a map or instructions showing how to park near to the hotel to unload our luggage - if you do not know Exeter the one-way system make this a challenging exercise .

The map supplied by the hotel showing the location of the allocated parking in a city centre multi-storey car park proved woefully inadequate .

The air-conditioning system in our room was so noisy it sounded like a squadron of second world war bombers !

The glass shelf in the shower room interfered with the use of the wash basin .

The breakfast room was drab and uninviting and the cooked breakfast at £15 was very poor value for money .

Finally to add insult to injury , we were not informed when we booked OR when we arrived that the room tariff had been raised by £14 because , the concierge informed us , it was university graduation week - this was in spite of the fact that the normal tariff was still being displayed in the reception !
I regard this underhand practice as something akin to piracy .