The White House, Southwold

The White House is a large family house a couple of streets back from the Southwold seafront, and it works well for a group holiday with dogs. The garden is enclosed and guests with dogs single it out as genuinely secure, there is off-road parking so you are not hauling a wet dog through a public car park, and the beach, the pier and the town centre are all within an easy walk.

The house is set up for numbers. It comfortably takes a party of around ten across several bedrooms, with a well-stocked kitchen, a comfortable lounge and an outhouse used as a playroom. Groups celebrating birthdays and family weekends have brought dogs along without any friction, and the layout means there is somewhere for a dog to settle away from the noise.

Being straight about the trade-offs matters here. Because dogs stay regularly and the house has carpets and rugs, a later party arriving after a dog-owning group found a strong dog smell in the bedrooms and ended up hoovering, shifting rugs and buying air fresheners. A musty kitchen smell has come up separately. If anyone in your party is sensitive to that, raise it with the owners before you arrive. Some of the fixtures are old and stiff, particularly the doors and windows, the downstairs wet room drains slowly and stays wet through the day, and the crockery runs thin if you are a full house of ten.

No pet fee, dog limit or restriction on which rooms dogs may use is set out anywhere on the listing, so agree those directly with the owners when you book. On a 4.5/5 paw rating, The White House suits a large group with dogs who want to walk into Southwold and onto the beach without driving anywhere.