Luke & I would like to take the opportunity to wish every one of you a very Happy New Year and our best wishes for all that the year brings with it. We had a really enjoyable New Years Eve with many familiar faces sat enjoying our nine course dinner - as well as a few new faces experiencing Arundel House for the first time. We hope you all enjoyed your evening as much as we did.

Following our closure due to the snow on Thursday, we are happy to say that there are clear skies over Arundel and we will be operating as normal over the weekend. Furthermore, we have had a number of cancellations for the coming weekend, and are offering all of our rooms at a £25 discount on Friday, Saturday & Sunday for new reservations. See our Room Rates page for more details!

Just to give you a little idea of how much snow has fallen in Littlehampton - on the coast!

Only yesterday we started playing the odd festive tune at Arundel House, and today we have woken to a spectacular winter wonderland. Sadly, this means we are simply unable to get to Arundel House this morning, and we have decided that we cannot reasonably ask our staff to attempt the journey. Arundel House is likely to remain closed for the entire day, though we fully intend to open as usual on Friday. We are able to update this website from home, and will make every effort to keep you informed as the day progresses. We’ll try to post some pictures on the blog a bit later!

Our New Year’s Eve menu is also now available underneath the Welcome tab at the top of the page. As in previous years, this is a wonderful evening of fine dining, good wine and great company. Due to the popularity of the event, we only have a few tables left - even though no-one yet knows what is on the menu. At the time of writing, I think we have two tables of four available, as well as two rooms that each have a table of two reserved for the night.

We don’t want you to go to any additional expense on the evening, but if it takes your fancy, Black Tie & Dinner Dress is welcomed, but not compulsory. The idea is to be comfortable, relaxed and to enjoy your evening. I just know that some people love any excuse to dress up!

Our new Winter menu is now available to view, and to download as a PDF file. We begin serving the menu on Wednesday, 1st December 2010. This is very much our menu for the Winter, but you won’t help but notice some festive flavours have been introduced especially for December. Another introduction for December will be the return of Lunch and Dinner service on Monday - just to help those of you in need of nourishment whilst in town on a festive shopping spree! Our decorations will also be on display this week - so that’s nice.

The Arundel Gallery Trail took place from Saturday 21st to Monday 30th August 2010 alongside the other great happenings of the Arundel Festival. Over 150 sculptors, painters, printers, ceramicists, photographers and jewellers were amongst the many exhibitors showing this year, giving you the opportunity to meet and talk to the artists whilst discovering many of Arundel's period homes.

Arundel House Restaurant & Rooms was proud to play host to Mike Payne, who was exhibiting some of his many concepts and illustrations. His work will remain on display until the 2011 Gallery Trail. All of the work is available to purchase through Arundel House.

Renowned award winning international artist Mike Payne is best known as the creator of ranges and concepts of hugely successful characters and licensed merchandise known across the world.

After 26 years in the civil service, Mike Payne broke free and became a renowned international award-winning cartoonist and illustrator. A chance event when the art director of Athena International (greetings cards) happened upon an open portfolio of Mike’s cartoons resulted in the launch of a new career and Athena buying everything in the folder. Mike is now one of the UK's leading and most respected experts in the world of commercial humour, greeting card design, books and gift concept development. Images and creations from the many characters he has created have an immediate and instinctive appeal, and it is estimated that greetings cards featuring his creations have sold in excess of ten hundred million worldwide.

When Mike was a small child people used to say that he could draw before he could walk! Mike was always drawing and found inspiration for his cartoons from Disney and Giles. When he was asked to create a bear with a great depth of feeling for the then newly formed company Carte Blanche in 1987, working under his pen name of “Miranda”, Mike created a phenomenon.

Mike's 'Tatty Teddy' character for the 'Me to You' concept (the charcoal bear with the blue nose), together with other unique creations, have won numerous awards in the USA, Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and, of course, the UK. Mike has travelled the world doing many “signings” and after seventeen years of drawing the teddy bear, in 2004, decided the time was right to move on to pastures new.

Mike’s latest concept Charlie’s Ark, has taken over four years to develop. Greeting cards, cross-stitch kits and two different varieties of paper-craft are now on sale. The First Collection of Charlie’s Ark children’s stories was released in November 2009 by Andrews UK as an Audio-book CD and the Second Collection of stories was released recently.

The humour continues in the form of "The Wine Buffs" which is a range of amusing greeting cards on sale throughout the UK.

A lecturer at schools and colleges, with many TV appearances to his name and a passion for professional acting, Mike is a sought after and original public speaker. His time as Sky News cartoonist in 1999 was the perfect environment to entertain and promote the art of cartooning, for which he is globally renowned.

So read the headlines in the local newspaper the last time rumours of the impending sale of Arundel House spread like wildfire through the town. Once again word has reached our ears that we have, or are about to, sell Arundel House and we would like to reassure you that nothing could be further from the truth.

Arundel House has been advertised for sale for many years and full details can be found at Christie & Co. In this day and age we challenge you to find any business that is not for sale at the right price. We are quite open to the possibility that Arundel House may find a buyer one day, and we won’t deny that the opportunities to develop our business excite us tremendously. Others are quite the opposite, and few of us will invite you to the board meeting to join in the discussions.

Rest assured that if it should ever happen, you will hear it from us first, as we invite you all to the opening of our new venue!

Last year we hosted Hungarian photographer Peter Nemeth for the 2009 Arundel Gallery Trail. Peter’s work has been impressing our guests for a full year now and he is busy preparing new works for the 2010 Trail. As such, all of the work hanging in our restaurant is currently available for a staggering £45 per piece. Tremendous value for such beautiful work. This offer is only available direct from Arundel House, and until August 20th, 2010.



Click here for details, and a look at more of the images...

Just trying a new feature that may help you to keep up to date with the latest news from Arundel House. Will add more as we learn what to do!