The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Next-level treehouses
It is almost a decade since Chewton Glen (chewtonglen.com) took the luxury treehouse trend to new heights with its valley of five-star, Martin Hulbert-designed stilted hotel suites in the New Forest. Over the years, increasingly fantastical arboreal wonderlands have been created, designed by architects and built sustainably using indigenous woods – elevating the concept from childhood fairytale to grown-up dream, and featuring rain showers, hot tubs and copper rolltop bathtubs on verandas.
Right now, in a booming UK holiday-rentals market, they have never been more in demand. “Treehouse” is Canopy & Stars’s most-searched accommodation type, making up seven of its top 10 places to stay in 2021. Among them are next-level creations by award-winning designer Simon Parfitt (who also made those at Pickwell Manor in Devon; pickwellmanor.co.uk), Wild Escapes, which launched last year in a Hampshire vineyard, and the Scandi-minimalist Sky Den in Northumberland’s Kielder Forest, which has reservations as far
ahead as December 2023 and is almost fully booked already for 2022 (canopyandstars.co.uk).
More traditional rental companies have branched out to meet demand. James Starkey, chief operating officer at holidaycottages.co.uk, reports that their “treehouse properties sit within the top one per cent of most-viewed properties for 2021”, which he puts down to the combination of “quirky nature and countryside locations”.
Indeed, quirky countryside digs abound on Airbnb’s most wish-listed Top 20, which includes a pigsty, a converted boat, an airship, and various hand-hewn woodland cabins. Among the trends of 2021 identified by the rentals giant are “the escape to rural”, and our collective desire for unique stays.
Treehouses tick all the boxes, being remote, off-grid, eco-friendly and unique. They are good for our mental wellbeing, too; scientific studies have found that spending time among trees boosts happiness and reduces stress.
“Everyone wants space and to be surrounded by fresh air and nature,” according to Ed Burrows and Charles Randall, owners of Wildhive (wildhive. uk; from £259), a series of folksy-luxe treehouses given the Chelsea treatment by Isabella Worsley, which launched last month at Callow Hall in Derbyshire. The idea for their woodland retreat may have been conceived long before Covid, but it is spot-on for a world recovering from the effects of the pandemic – offering a fairytale escape from everyday life.