Heckfield Place, Hampshire
They’ve become quite the thing, these country houses where everything’s super cool and yet reassuringly old-school, haven’t they? It’s Gosford Park or Downton Abbey but without the starch that Soho House has done superbly at Babington and at Farmhouse - but we’ll eat our foundation garments if it’s been done better than at Heckfield Place.
With 400 acres and two lakes, one of which you can wild swim in, and a 17th-century manor house to play with, they’ve struck the exact right balance between chic and contemporary and authentically historic. Walk in and you can see right through the house, across a terrace onto the rolling countryside and those lakes. In autumn its an uprising of colour while in summer the place leaks out onto those lawns, where you can find your spot and melt into the landscape. The first thing that strikes you inside is the art, all from the private collection of the owner, a richer-than Chinese doctor who wanted to build a private house for himself in the English countryside and then, when it was done, decided he might as well share it. The art is quirky and cool, totally works in situ and is apparently changed often so those regulars – and the regulars are already regular, even though it’s only been open just over a year – don’t get tired. Yes, opened on 1 September 2018 and immediately voted Hotel of the Year. Not bad going.
Back inside and up a grand staircase (there is a lift, but you don’t want to not go up the grand staircase with its walls lined with black and white photographs right up to the ceiling), you get to the accommodations, which vary from small suites to – and this was kind of our favourite – entry-level rooms which probably once housed the maids but which now are beautiful and cosy with fresh flowers and views right out across all that bucolic loveliness. Bathrooms are made to laze around in with big baths and furniture with that modern-but-old-school thing working just right.
Downstairs you have your Moon Bar, which is for residents only so those pesky locals can’t take it over, which they would if they could, with its big bronze bar and its huge mirror ball installed in what is otherwise a sweet country parlour. And through there in the Drawing Room, they serve free organic cake come 4pm. Not a whole tea as they don’t want to spoil your appetite for when you get to Marle, the main restaurant.
Marle comes across like a country kitchen, but a very fancy one, relaxed with those views and an outside, first-floor terrace for lazy summer brunches. Eau de Nil walls (that’s light green to you!) and rustic vases of dried flowers that they collect from the estate give it that country look without it ever going near Miss Marple territory.
‘I went to finishing school in Switzerland,’ says an elderly woman with towering white hair on the next table when we have a totally organic vegan dinner (60% of the produce is, erm, produced on the estate), ‘but they didn’t finish me particularly well!’ Which is probably how she gets to hang with the cool kids at somewhere as stealthily funky as this.
Oh and downstairs, through the room with different sizes of Hunter wellies lined up so you can take a ramble without doing in your own shoes, there’s Hearth, another place to eat but only at
weekends and only, again, for residents. This is even more rustic and snooky and you fear that if you came in on a snoozy afternoon and someone poured out some red wine, you might never leave.
The spa is there but still in the making, with an infinity pool coming soon, with treatments that use plants from the estate and there’s even a state-ofthe-art screening room with 60-odd seats should you need it. And if you have mucho dinero to spend, you could take the £10,000-a-night penthouse, a beautiful space with its own dining room and kitchen, terrace and sitting room complete with turntable and a record collection that goes from Nina Simone to the Rolling Stones.
It’s strange that this part of Hampshire already had a Four Seasons, just a short ride in one of the hotel’s own Land Rovers, which they use to pick you up at the station, but there’s clearly an appetite for country luxe around these parts as Heckfield Place has hit the (beautiful) ground running. Every little detail is perfection (drip coffee in your room, staff in country-twee outfits by E¢ of London, water bottles in grey knitted sweaters) and not one jot is an afterthought (the loveliest stationery you ever did see, embossed with flowers you’ll find right there, outside your window). It’s Agatha Christie swish, the countryside in HD, rustic elegance with enough quirk to make it stand out in a glut of superstar British country retreats... and we’re head over Hunter wellies in love.