This bastion of natural wine-making near Romney Marsh (left) is still rooted in its 13th-century farm with fruit trees and livestock – including chicken, goats, sheep and mangalica pigs – alongside 10,000 vines. There are also 11 comfy bedrooms situated in an old hop barn, a pizzeria and a restaurant with a strong vegetarian menu. The desserts are delicious, too – especially the rhubarb poached in Tillingham rosé wine.
Doubles from £165 B&B, tillingham.com
The Tawny, Staffordshire
Opening next month near Stoke-on-Trent, The Tawny combines glamping with a posh bricks-and-mortar restaurant. There will be 55 treehouses, boathouses and hermit huts dotted around its 70 acres. The kitchen garden will supply the main restaurant; meals can also be delivered around the estate and there’s a heated outdoor pool.
Cabins from £230 B&B, thetawny.co.uk
Monachyle Mhor, Perthshire
Chef Tom Lewis started helping out on his family farm in the 1990s. Today, the 2,000 acres continue to feed into its restaurant, especially with lamb, while the kitchen garden provides vegetables and fruit in summer. The farmhouse is now a 12-room hotel, with converted show wagons and treehouses in the woods.
Doubles from £250 B&B, monachylemhor.net
Coombeshead Farm, Cornwall
At this farmhouse belonging to celebrated chefs Tom Adams and April Bloomfield, all the ingredients are homegrown and the restaurant is housed in the farm’s barn with a wood-fired oven. Non-guests can drop in if there’s availability. Lockdown has seen four extra rooms added to the original five, all with a nod to the house’s 18th-century agricultural past.
Doubles from £195 B&B, coombesheadfarm.co.uk
Forest Side, Lake District
Over the past few years, this hotel rear Grasmere has started to return some of its grounds to their 18th-century farming origins, with heritage vegetables grown, including the crapaudine beetroot. There are six gardeners, while chef Paul Leonard’s kitchen pickles and ferments the produce for the winter as well as serving it in his award-winning restaurant.
Doubles from £299 B&B, theforestside.com
Old-Lands, Monmouthshire
A 200-acre estate and a grand gothic house that has been in the same family for 200 years, Old-Lands now has a forward-thinking ethos that favours organic cultivation. Very family-friendly, it offers a forest school for children, and self-catering is made easy for parents. A much-loved farm shop sells produce from the walled garden – which you can cook yourself or have cooked for you by the chef. Accommodation comes in the form of a delightful, fully kitted-out trio: a cottage, a barn and an apartment.
A week’s stay starts at £350 or £54 a night with Sawday’s
Glebe House, Devon
Last year, Hugo and Olive Guest turned their family’s hilltop home near Southleigh into an Italian-style agriturismo project. The five bedrooms and an annexe are full of colour and verve. A 15-acre smallholding provides vegetables and there’s a bakery and charcuterie room plus an outdoor swimming pool; it’s also an easy trip to the coast at Beer. At weekends guests can enjoy a four-course menu at £48, while on weekdays “simple suppers” cost £20. Breakfasts feature homemade breads and pastries plus granola and yoghurts.
Doubles from £145 B&B, glebehousedevon.co.uk
Fritton Lake, Norfolk
In former times, grand estates always had a home farm. Today, the one at Somerleyton supplies the restaurant and cottages at Fritton Lake. Despite the name, anyone can stay at the Clubhouse, once the farm manager’s home. There are eight deeply stylish, colour-filled bedrooms as well as a series of Scandi-spare lodges dotted around in the pretty woods close to the lake. Guests can go on foraging tours with the gardeners; the produce currently winging its way into the kitchens includes strawberries and asparagus, with peaches and nectarines to come.
Doubles from £140 B&B, frittonlake.co.uk
Crumplebury, Worcestershire
Serving produce from its own farm, Green Cow – an award-winning restaurant down a bumpy track on the border with Herefordshire – opened in 2012. Now there’s also accommodation for up to 26 people in a variety of cottages and rooms in the original farm building, all featuring roll-top baths, monsoon showers and deliciously comfortable beds. Woodland feasts, where meals are served in a tree-shaded glade, can also be arranged.
Double rooms start at £165 B&B, crumplebury.co.uk
The Pig, New Forest
The pioneer of the farm hotel movement in the UK, this hotel in the New Forest, opened in 2011, was the first of a stable of Pig restaurants with rooms around. There’s a relaxed country vibe with squashy sofas and rustic decor, family rooms with bunk beds plus spa treatments in a potting shed. The kitchen garden, complete with saddleback pigs, stretches over an acre, with courgettes, kale and beans as well as herbs and edible flowers for cocktails; what they don’t grow comes from within a strict 25-mile radius.
Doubles from £185 room-only, thepighotel.com
Source:https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2021/jun/27/10-of-britain-best-farmhouse-hotels-rooms-cooking
