The Newt Hotel

Somerset, England

With its grand interiors and eclectic art, this Somerset country estate has everything you want from a luxury weekend stay and plenty more besides, including its very own cider press

Words by Alex Mead.

The closer you look at The Newt, the better it gets. And given that, from the moment you get your first glimpse of this 17th-century country pile in its lush green Somerset grounds, it already has you enraptured, that’s saying something.

Every aspect here has been so thoughtfully considered, from the perfect muddle of old and new art and artefacts that adorn every space to the effort that goes into what’s served on every plate and in every glass.

The estate stretches across some 120ha of woodland, parkland and orchards, providing a home for deer, water buffalo, pigs, ducks, sheep, 3,500 apple trees and almost as many of the newts that give the property its moniker. Its ornamental gardens draw many, sculpted as they were by one of the former residents, famed gardener Penelope Hobshouse – whose family called Hadspen House (as it was) home for 230 years – and coming in many forms, with ‘kitchen’, ‘colour’ and ‘fragrance’ among the garden varieties. They’re places to get lost in, noting a different small detail with each visit, be it in the stone-floor mosaic in the apple-tree maze, the newt statues adorning ponds or the telephone by the tennis court for ordering your afternoon gin and tonic.

Chefs are spoilt for produce, having not only a rich, fertile estate and Somerset’s kitchen garden (the pick of which is available in their own farm shop), but getting the best from South Africa, too, where The Newt’s luxury vineyard-garden-hotel sibling resides. As we visit, a harvest of blood oranges from Babylonstoren in the Cape Winelands has just arrived and they are being integrated into the menu in innovative and delicious dishes.

The Newt is perfect. Even while having a heated indoor-outdoor pool for night-time swims, an extensive spa, gym with garden views, an art space, several eating areas, including the plant-forward Garden Café, and a cider press making some of the best ‘cyders’ on the market, it manages to feel intimate. It’s old and new in all the right places, with such attention to detail that, however long you stay, you’ll always want a second look.

Doubles from £255. 0196 357 7777, thenewtinsomerset.com

This review was taken from the October/November 2020 issue of Food and Travel.

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