Church Cottage, Newgate, Barnard Castle, Durham, DL12 8NQ

Having read previous reviews we thought as we had not visited Barnard Castle that Church Cottage would be an ideal place to stay to celebrate my wife?s 65th birthday. However, I cannot understand how many positive reviews could be given as our experience is completely different. Upon our arrival on a cold January day, we found that the cottage was extremely cold, and the heating turned off plus there was a terrible smell coming from the kitchen. Investigating we found that the smell was coming from both the fridge that had not been thoroughly cleaned and a broken freezer that had just been left with offensive discoloured fluid inside. On contacting the owner, he did come round immediately and said that he had put the heating on for just 30 minutes that day as some people like properties to be cold on arrival but on a cold winter?s day in an old property I said it was not acceptable and the heating was turned off not on a timer. He did clean the fridge also stated that he was aware that the freezer had broken but why he had not replaced it was baffling as the cottage had not been occupied before we arrived. He did arrange for a replacement freezer which came the following day but unfortunately that was too late for us as my wife who is a coeliac had prepared several meals for the week which were frozen and had started to defrost before the replacement came and some had to be thrown away. I managed to turn the heating on, but it took 2 days to get the cottage up to a comfortable and acceptable temperature. We also found that whilst on the surface the cottage looked clean, we found that upon closer inspection there were issues, mould on the bath sealant, around the window and on the non-slip bathmat. All the window frames in the cottage also had not been cleaned for what looked like a long time as there was a build-up of dirt and fluff on every surface. In addition, we found the oven and grill pan was not particularly clean and the baking/oven sheets unusable. We were unable to find any cleaning products to do basic cleaning up for any spills that we made and why none were provided was mystifying and we had to purchase our own. We were not enjoying our stay and did not feel that we could celebrate my wife?s birthday properly so decided to leave early and advise the owner of our reasons. What I need to understand is how Sykes managed to give this property a 4-tick rating and whether they do any follow up review rating as things change within a property as it appears they don?t and without it gives customers a potentially misleading rating as my rating for this property would be between 1-2 ticks.