Inside England’s most exclusive country estates
The newly opened Estelle Manor in Oxfordshire is the hottest new country hotel in England, joining neighbours Soho Farmhouse and Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons. We try out all three.
Nothing compares to the English countryside in spring. There’s a chill in the air but the sun is out and the landscape is coming back to life after hibernating for the winter. A patchwork of vibrant yellow rapeseed fields and rolling green hills contrast against blue skies dotted with puffy white clouds, like a John Constable painting.
Pink blossoms sprout on apple trees, daffodils and tulips are unfurling and purple wisteria drips over stone walls. It is no wonder this rural idyll has been the setting of so many novels, movies and television shows.
I am in Oxfordshire, an hour out of London, exploring three country houses that offer different but utterly indulgent experiences. One is the newly opened Estelle Manor, a Jacobean-style mansion turned hotel and private members club. Not far away, French chef Raymond Blanc’s Michelin-star estate is celebrating its 40th year. Then there’s Soho Farmhouse, a sprawling retreat where weekending Londoners ride vintage-style bikes from spa appointments to afternoon drinks, swerving around wandering white geese and possibly the Beckhams, who live next door.
Estelle Manor
As soon as the car I’m travelling in stops in front of the grand entrance of the Grade II-listed country house of this 34ha estate, it’s clear I’m in for something special. The front doors are opened by smartly dressed staff and I walk into a reception hall that meets all expectations of a grand English manor. There is a roaring fire at the centre of the oak-panelled room, leather couches to sink into, an ornate chandelier hanging from the ceiling, velvet curtains draping the windows, striking modern art, and books and newspapers on the coffee table. I’m trying to capture the beautiful scene on my phone when I notice the other patrons are happily engaged in conversation. Recalling that this is a private members club as well as a hotel, I put the phone away as it seems crass and out of place.
Estelle Manor is a country outpost of the exclusive Maison Estelle private members club in Mayfair (where taking pictures is banned) and the brainchild of hotelier Sharan Pasricha. The Indian-born, London Business School-educated entrepreneur founded Ennismore hospitality group in 2011, bought The Hoxton in London’s Shoreditch in 2012 and expanded it into a network of 16 Hoxton-branded hotels across Europe and the US (now jointly owned with Accor), as well as opening other luxury resorts globally. He bought Estelle Manor, previously known as Eynsham Hall, in 2018 and with his wife, Eiesha Bharti Pasricha, spent five years renovating the property to their creative vision.
“It’s opulent but contemporary,” Sharan Pasricha explains. “We’ve honoured the original architecture and features, from the plasterwork ceilings in the living room to the Jacobean revival reception hall with original oak panelling. I wanted the design to feel very eclectic and layered, almost like a well-travelled family friend’s home – comfortable but filled with curiosities and trinkets.”
Like many English country homes, Eynsham Hall has a fascinating history. It was built in the 1700s but burned down in 1903; it’s rumoured the lady of the house lit the blaze after admiring the homes of her neighbours. What emerged from the rebuild was a Jacobean-style mansion. The property was used as a maternity hospital during World War II, a police training facility in the decades that followed, and a conference centre in the 1980s before being transformed into today’s elegant iteration.
It now has 108 guestrooms and suites across the main house, stables and walled garden buildings, as well as cottages in the woodland, four restaurants and a 3000sq m Roman-inspired bathhouse and spa. Its opening last August garnered rave reviews, with one leading British newspaper giving it a rare 10/10 rating.
“It is amazing to get feedback from the members and guests saying that they’ve felt truly looked after,” says Pasricha. “I wanted them to leave their rural escape having enjoyed our thoughtful and beautiful design, wonderful service and incredible food.”
My 45sq m suite is certainly one of the most beautiful rooms I have stayed in. It features a king-size four-poster bed, polished hardwood floors, green brocade velvet couches and a marble bathroom with copper bathtub that I would happily soak in for a weekend. A writing desk, with paper inscribed with “a note from the manor”, stands under one of two windows that look out over the stunning pool and parkland. I could imagine writing to my sister Jane about the goings-on at Netherfield Park and seeing Mr Darcy striding across the manicured lawns bringing urgent news.
A marble-topped antique dresser hides a minibar and holds exquisite fine china tea cups, tea in silver canisters and a coffee machine. Old-fashioned crystal jars containing biscuits and – my favourite – handmade fudge sit atop a handpainted table. Classical music comes from a retro-style digital radio and the walls are covered in art. Not one inch of the room has been overlooked, from the botanical print wallpaper in the toilet to the multi-phone charger in the bedside table drawer tucked neatly into a canvas bag.
Luxe touches and thoughtfulness are also found in the restaurants: the Brasserie, offering an all-day menu in the manor house; the Billiards Room, a Chinese eatery aiming for a Michelin rating; the Living Room, a bar that offers snacks and light meals, and; The Glasshouse, a conservatory-style space that uses fresh produce from the walled garden.
Lunch at The Glasshouse is my highlight. The seasonal sharing menu is delicious. The cured salmon with horseradish, creme fraiche and dill is a fresh-flavour sensation with every mouthful, the red capsicum schnitzel with harissa aioli an unexpected delight, and the apple-and-blackberry crumble with vanilla custard a British classic at its finest.
Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons
Garden-to-table dining may be commonplace in Britain now but its first exponent was French chef Raymond Blanc at his restaurant in Oxfordshire in 1984. Born in Besancon, near France’s border with Switzerland, Blanc was taught to cook by his mother and to tend the family vegetable garden by his father. This seasonal approach to eating left a big impression and when he spotted a 15th-century manor in the Oxfordshire village of Great Milton, it was a perfect venue to realise his culinary dream.
Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons, “the house of the four seasons”, was born. It’s the only restaurant in Britain to have kept its two-Michelin-star rating since its first year of operation, and Blanc is celebrating its 40th anniversary. To mark the occasion, the restaurant hotel is serving a special menu that reinvents Blanc’s favourite dishes and showcases the produce grown in the property’s extensive vegetable gardens, orchards and beehives.
The gastronomic experience starts long before you sit down for the seven-course meal at Le Manoir, which is run by luxury hospitality group Belmond; it begins the moment you enter your room. There are 32 suites and guestrooms at Le Manoir and each is different (one is entirely white). I am staying in the one-bedroom Provence suite, which was inspired by Blanc’s travels in the French countryside, and has high ceilings, exposed beams, floor-to-ceiling windows and an open fireplace.
The rustic dining table is loaded with a mountain of goodies I should not touch given what is to come, but I can’t help myself. The freshly baked lemon cake is still warm from the oven, and there’s a platter of oranges, pears and dates, a bottle of champagne and handmade chocolates. I’m tempted, again, by the glass of bubbles offered as a pre-dinner drink in front of the fire in the main manor house where Blanc’s restaurant is located. Yes, I will have another. And of course I’d like to try some of the olives and smoked almonds with my English sparkling wine.
By the time I reach Blanc’s magnificent candlelit dining room overlooking his treasured gardens, I’m panicking about the seven courses coming my way. My fears are somewhat allayed as an attentive waiter presents the first dishes.
They are small but perfectly formed works of art, and timed to allow a sufficient break in between. The confit of Scottish salmon with sorrel (90 per cent of the vegetables on the menu come from Blanc’s plots) melts in the mouth; Cornish lobster ravioli is served with lime and chard; chicken is stuffed into a morel mushroom and there are two desserts: a vibrant blood orange carpaccio and sorbet, and “theme on strawberry”, a sorbet, marshmallow, cream and cake concoction that shows off multiple cooking techniques. I draw the line at Blanc’s petites fours – a decision I still regret – and waddle back to my suite to find that staff have lit the fire.
The next day, I go on garden tour of Le Manoir with the green-fingered Holly, who gives more insight into the scale of the undertaking and the attention to detail (“he is a bit of a control freak”). The “lost apple orchard” has more than 150 varieties of the fruit trees, sourced from seed libraries.
Polycarbonate tunnels are full of every imaginable vegetable and herb to protect them from the English winter, and there are plans for a vineyard. “Raymond wants to grow English sparkling wine,” says Holly. “It will take eight to 10 years to get a vintage but he is determined.”
Soho Farmhouse
Since Soho House founder Nick Jones opened the second country offering of his private members club in 2015 in Chipping North, the place has played host to the A-list of British celebrity and society. Posh and Becks’s £12m ($22.8m) estate is next door and the couple often pops by for lunch. Meghan Markle had her hen’s party here back in 2018. Its popularity has even led to an increase in local house prices.
“Once you’ve talked about schools and other attractions to the area, they (potential buyers) might then mention they want to be near Soho Farmhouse,” Savills property specialist Crispin Holborow recently told British rural style bible Country Life. The 40ha estate has 114 guestrooms across 14 accommodation varieties, five restaurants, a fitness and wellness centre, a 40m indoor pool that extends outdoors and a spa aptly called Lazy Lake, where time is spent between hot tubs sunken into the lake, steam and ice rooms, and infrared saunas.
It is in one of these hot tubs that I find myself staring not only at the picture-perfect scenery but the other guests, all of whom exude glamour.
A group of buff twenty-something men are drinking champagne in the tub near mine, chatting about investment deals. They put their glasses down only to paint their faces with mud mask. As I wander back to my “farm hut” up the hill, a couple in hooded mint-green robes are riding vintage-style bikes, a gorgeous blonde toddler perfectly perched in a handlebar-mounted wicker basket. They are on their way to the T-shaped heated swimming pool that starts in a wooden barn and ends alongside another lake. In the mornings, it’s filled with keen swimmers doing laps; in the afternoon, with friends drinking cocktails.
Nearby is the Main Barn, a restaurant and lounge that is the central meeting place. It serves breakfast, Saturday brunch and Sunday roasts, as well as an all-day menu from 12pm to 11pm. British classics are given luscious twists, such as Welsh rarebit with truffle, and rice pudding topped with creme brulee. The other dining venues are Pen Yen, which has a Japanese izakaya-style menu, Persian restaurant Little Berenjak, a bakery and a wood-fried pizza eatery called Hay Barn.
Back in my farm hut (an understated name for the luxurious 50sq m space), I recline in the wooden outdoor bath and watch the sun set over the rapeseed fields. As the birds eloquently mark the occasion with their song, it feels, once again, that I’ve landed in a BBC adaptation of an Austen novel.
The next day, I’m ferried from my accommodation to the gatehouse at Soho Farmhouse in a black Porsche Cayenne. Back on the train to London, I overhear a conversation that could not be a more fitting end to my sojourn.
Two students studying English at Oxford are discussing reading requirements before heading to the city for a night out: “Have you done it yet?” one asks the other. “No, the play is just too boring. There is so much waffle. Not like Austen. I have done all the reading of her texts. I wish we could just read Jane Austen all the time.” Me too.
In the know
Estelle Manor is in North Leigh, Oxfordshire. It is 80 minutes’ drive from Heathrow Airport and an hour from London by train (Hanborough Station is a 10-minute drive from the hotel). Rooms from £525 ($1011) a night for two people, including breakfast. Estate suites from £1775 a night for two, including breakfast.
Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons is on Church Road, Great Milton, Oxfordshire. It is 45 minutes’ drive from Heathrow or 1.5 hours from London. Rooms from £1375 a night for two people and includes breakfast, three-course 40th anniversary menu and a bag of goodies.
Soho Farmhouse is in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire. It is two hours’ drive from London or
just over an hour on the train to Charlbury Station,which is 20 minutes away. Rooms from £315 a night for two, members only.
Milanda Rout was a guest of Estelle Manor, Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons, Soho Farmhouse and Visit Britain.
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