It’s a straightforward idea: you pay to spend your break in a genuine hunk of
British history — perhaps in the grounds of a Roman villa, a medieval
monastery, even a Georgian “house of correction”. For a few days or more,
your home really can be your castle.
The National Trust has been renting properties on its estates for years, while
charities such as the Landmark Trust exist to restore down-on-their-luck
monuments and then hire them out to the holidaying public.
Now, English Heritage is joining in — and tailoring its cottage “concept” to a
very discerning market. The exteriors may be Olde England but, inside, its
properties have had a slick 21st-century makeover, with boutique-hotel looks
throughout: clean lines, crisp linens and a bespoke paint palette of muted
ochres and greys. The cheapest week in its plainest house costs £455, and
every kitchen comes equipped with — and I quote — “everyday items like
corkscrews and garlic presses”.
Very tasty, too. So, with more vintage digs to choose from than ever, here is
our pick of the portfolios from the four leading agencies.
Two prices are quoted for each property: for a three-night weekend break in
May and a week in August. Availability is tight on some properties in high
summer, but all have dates free in spring and autumn. For full tariffs,
check the brochures
ENGLISH HERITAGE
A latecomer to the holiday-hire business, English Heritage has a portfolio
that is small but perfectly sculpted: just 13 properties, eight of them new
for 2007. Unlike many National Trust cottages, all stand right among the
ramparts of a historic site — under the motte perhaps, or inside the moat —
which often means you get the place to yourself once day-tripping hoi polloi
head home.
New for 2007: lots of first-time hires this year, including South
Lodge, at Battle Abbey, near Hastings (sleeps four; £360/£945), a
Hansel-and-Gretel hidey-hole looking straight out onto the field where
William the Conqueror gave one in the eye to the Saxons.
Much grander, though, is Cambridge Lodge (sleeps four; £360/£945), the
principal gatehouse to Audley End, in Essex, one of the fanciest Jacobean
palaces in the country. Audley is stuffed with aristocratic art and
antiquities, and the lodge makes a fitting ornament to its Capability Brown
park. Built in 1842, it has a stuccoed doorway, balustraded roof and your
own private turret — plus unfettered out-of-hours playtime on those sweeping
lawns.
The ancient option: Dover Castle is the ultimate castle in the air,
towering above cliffs and town, spick-and-span as a flat-pack fortress from
a children’s playground. Here you can hire the Sergeant Major’s House
(sleeps six; £425/£1,085), former home of the castle custodian. It’s a
four-storey Georgian pile in a stirring setting, wedged between the inner
and outer battlements. There’s a games room in the basement, and private
grounds where you can gaze across the Channel and imagine yourself commander
of Operation Dynamo, the evacuation from Dunkirk.
The posh option: all 13 properties are sleek, with bespoke oak kitchens
and lots of glittering chrome. But perhaps the standout stay is at Pavilion
Cottage (sleeps four; £360/£945) in the grounds of Queen Victoria’s Isle of
Wight holiday retreat, Osborne House.
It is the estate’s century-old cricket pavilion, snazzily converted, and its
veranda now reigns over verdant fields. But here’s the best bit: cottage
guests get the exclusive run of a shingle beach, once the private preserve
of Victoria and Albert. 0870 333 1187, www.english-heritage.org.uk/
holidaycottages
THE LANDMARK TRUST
Who needs Griff Rhys Jones? Every year, the Landmark Trust sifts through 150
new candidates to choose a handful of derelict architectural wonders to
save: it’s like a round-the-clock episode of Restoration.
Furbished in historically sensitive style, all 184 rescued “landmarks” are for
rent. And whereas English Heritage and the National Trust mostly let their
stable blocks, lodges and annexes, here you’ll often be bedding down in the
stately edifice itself — perhaps an original Edwin Lutyens almshouse, or
Augustus Pugin’s family pile.
New for 2007: Landmark’s most recent acquisition is Keeper’s Cottage,
at Old Warden, Bedfordshire (sleeps four; £498/£846), a Victorian
gamekeeper’s lodge, freshly reclaimed from the ferns and the pheasants, and
hosting its first “Landmarkers” this month.
More glamorous, though, is St Augustine’s Grange in Ramsgate (sleeps eight;
£954/£1,831), designed as a self-build gothic fantasy by Augustus Pugin in
the 1840s: the great architect knocked out his plans for the House of Lords
in the library here. The trust has splashed out £2.6m on restoring Pugin’s
private chapel, his telescope tower and tons of florid flourishes — the
wallpaper is definitely an indoor-sunglasses job.
The ancient option: there’s hot competition here: 13th-century
Stogursey Castle in the Quantocks, and Woodsford Castle in Dorset, circa
1370... but we like Purton Green in Suffolk (sleeps four; £497/£1,208).
Purton is one of the county’s many lost villages, but this timber-and-thatch
cottage somehow survived. Its central hall dates from 1250, a great rarity,
with scissor-braced trusses, ornamental arcade and a stout medieval
atmosphere. The feeling of entering another age is only enhanced by your
mode of arrival: it is stranded among fields at the end of a footpath — no
car access — with a wheelbarrow provided to help transport your stuff the
last 400 yards.
The posh option: all the Landmark interiors aim to preserve the
“texture and character” of their contemporary times. But Luttrell’s Tower
(sleeps four; £1,082/£2,768), beside the Solent at Eagleshurst, is
exceptional: an outlandish Georgian folly with pink chimneypot tower and its
own “smugglers’ tunnel” down to the shore. Queen Victoria nearly bought it;
Marconi used it for his wireless experiments; and Lord Cavan installed two
mysterious Nubian feet, thought to come from a statue of the pharaoh Ramses
II. Rooms come with handsome chimneypieces and exquisite shellwork, and
there is a turret-top eyrie for ship-watching. 01628 825925,
www.landmarktrust.org.uk
THE VIVAT TRUST
“We think of ourselves as Landmark’s little brother,” says Vivat Trust
property manager Lisa Simm. “But we don’t make our guests compromise so much
— Landmark is a bit more puritan in its approach to preserving the period of
its buildings.” That’s a coy way of saying you can expect a more luxurious
experience: Vivat’s 22 properties have dishwashers and DVDs, microwaves and
Bose stereos. All tucked behind the period wainscoting, naturally.
New for 2007: this spring, the trust is unveiling two inspiring new
restorations in north Norfolk: West End Watermill (sleeps six; £598/£1,025),
built in 1790, a two-minute drive from the delectably upmarket village of
Burnham Overy; and the Manse House (sleeps five; £598/ £1,025), a Victorian
rectory at Little Walsingham. The latter is beautifully set among crooked
cottages and timbered tearooms, and packed with character: relax in the
roll-top bath overlooking Walsingham’s ruined friary, then repair up a
hidden staircase to the master bedroom beneath the eaves.
The ancient option: The Chantry (sleeps five; £520/£890), at Bridport
in Dorset, has more than 700 years of history soaked into its mellow yellow
stones, and does a terrific job of showing it. There’s the semicircular
sconce on the seaward wall, testament to the building’s original use as a
lighthouse; the niches in the bathroom from its time as a 14th-century
pigeon loft; and the 17th-century wall paintings, relics of its conversion
to a family home.
The posh option: a tough choice. Should it be the impeccably Georgian
Cloister House in the grounds of Melrose Abbey? Or perhaps North Lees Hall
in Derbyshire, the Elizabethan tower-house that inspired Mr Rochester’s
place in Jane Eyre? Both are beautiful, but the Vivat property that really
gets the imagination going is the Temple, at Badger in Shropshire (sleeps
two; £450/£755), a dinky pink Palladian folly in the grounds of Badger Hall.
Inside, it’s all elegance — spiral staircase, painted furniture — and a
colonnaded balcony overlooks the hall’s artfully romantic landscape of
caves, cliffs and cascades. 020 7336 8825, www.vivat.org.uk
THE NATIONAL TRUST
The portfolio runs to more than 350 properties, and since the trust looks
after wind-blasted tracts of open countryside as well as stately estates,
some are cheap and cheerful, though rarely without charm. Remote Bird How
cottage in the Lake District, for example, can be had for as little as £17pp
per night: chemical toilet, no caretaker — and bring your own bed linen.
New for 2007: this year, the trust has added several properties roomy
enough for house-party gatherings, including the Old Rectory at Bratoft, in
the Lincolnshire Wolds (sleeps 11; £484/£1,802). A sturdy red-brick Regency
affair, it has six bedrooms, a study and a sweeping gravel driveway for your
grand arrival.
The ancient option: how grand do you want your time-travel to be? Lords
and ladies of the manor can now hire the entire west wing of the
15th-century Lytes Cary in Somerset (sleeps 10; £691/£2,233). Available for
the first time this year, it is roomy enough to accommodate your army of
private servants, with its long gallery, formal gardens and private tennis
court.
At the other end of the social pecking order is the Dairy Cottage, on the
Stackpole estate in Pembrokeshire (sleeps four; £289/£772), a cosy stone
byre built about 1500 — bijou rooms inside, wide open clifftops beyond the
gate.
The posh option: the Choristers’ House, near Fountains Abbey in
Yorkshire (sleeps 10; £732/£2,378), once housed a Victorian music school.
The interiors are all original — formal sitting room with sumptuous antique
fittings, mullioned windows, chandeliers — plus you have commanding views
overlooking Studely Deer Park, with its hot and cold running stags. 0870
458 4422, www.nationaltrustcottages.co.uk
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