Irish skies are full of clouds for over half the year and great sunrises are rare. But if you happen to catch one outside the Carton House hotel on a foggy morning, it’s a stunner. Beneath a dim, deep blue sky, layers of glowing orange and verdant green stretch across the horizon. From a hotel room window, the striking scene inspires you to throw on a thick sweater and set out on a morning walk, perhaps through the woods to that little waterfall next to the cottage where Marianne Faithfull once lived. Other than the lively birdsong and an occasional keen jogger on the trails, it is a profoundly peaceful place to experience the start of your day.
Carton House, outside of Dublin, sits in the middle of a 450-hectare park. Accommodations range from grand staterooms in the main house to a garden wing with more contemporary spaces.JACK HARDY/Supplied
That sense of calm is a big part of the appeal of country house resorts like this one, which is situated about a half-hour west of Dublin in an 18th-century pile that was once the ancestral seat of the Earls of Kildare. Country house hotels are increasingly popular with travellers and to meet the burgeoning demand, ever more estates are being converted from private sanctuaries to vacation destinations.
Aside from Carton House, which recently reopened after an extensive renovation, new ownership and management by Fairmont Hotels and Resort, there have also been conversions of Derbyshire’s Wildhive Callow Hall and The Retreat at Elcot Park, an estate in Berkshire once owned by Lady Shelley, mother to poet Percy Bysshe. Some estimates put the number of country house hotels in the United Kingdom at 5,000, although Adrian Tinniswood, British historian and author of Noble Ambitions: The Fall and Rise of the English Country House After World War II says that number might be a bit high. “There’s probably only about 5,000 country houses in England,” he says. “So that number might include rectories and vicarages or even big farmhouses that have been converted. But if you’re talking about real ‘country houses,’ then you’re talking about the big boys.”
The big boys typically have upward of 20 guest rooms, their own extensive grounds and, at one time, served as the centre of a working agricultural estate. Even by this tighter definition, there are still several hundred four- and five-star luxury country house hotels to choose from in the United Kingdom and Ireland. If you include pretenders, like converted hunting and fishing lodges, remote railway hotels and modern homages to stately homes, such as the Jacobean-inspired Fairmont Windsor Park outside of London, the options are endless.
Fairmont's Windsor Park hotel, which opened in 2022, sits off a leafy lane lined with the stone gates.Supplied
Windsor Park, a five-star hotel with over-the-top fitness amenities, first-rate dining and ample space for big celebrations, is almost entirely new, constructed on the site of Heath Lodge, a private home near Windsor Castle. Its construction would have been quite jarring for anyone living through the “crisis of the country house,” circa 1890 to 1950, when so many of the originals had fallen into disrepair and were slated for demolition. In 1944, when Evelyn Waugh wrote Brideshead Revisited, a nostalgic love letter to “buildings that grew silently with the centuries, catching and keeping the best of each generation,” he was convinced such estates would soon be extinct.
The Orchid Tea Room at Fairmont's Windsor Park hotel.VIKTOR KERY PHOTOS/Supplied
“In the year 1955, country houses in England were being demolished one per week,” Tinniswood says. Around that time, though, some house-poor owners did the previously unthinkable and threw their doors open to day-trippers who paid a half-crown for an afternoon escape and country house tourism was born.
The slick interior of the sprawling spa at Windsor Park.VIKTOR KERY PHOTOS/Supplied
That style of vacation is alive, well and stronger than ever. Some of the draw to these grand spaces is learning how the estates operated (the servants’ bell room at Carton has been lovingly preserved and is a fan favourite on its tour). Another draw, especially for DNA tourists looking to reconnect with their British and Irish ancestry, is the aura of these buildings. And then there’s the fact that country house hotels tend to have great bedrooms.
“There’s been a spike in residential-inspired hotels because it’s a more calming and intimate experience than some other styles of hotel,” says Alia Akkam, a Budapest-based author and travel writer who focuses on design and hotels. “For a while, the trend was hotels with big, buzzy public spaces where you could hang out and have a cocktail.” Akkam says that the pandemic has prompted a new appreciation for the hotel room, itself, and so in-room square footage and amenities started to expand.
Today, hotels that emphasize public space are back and thriving, but our newfound appreciation for a really great suite hasn’t gone away. “People are spending more time in their rooms, whether it’s to read, take a bath or just gaze out the window at the gardens as the rain streams down a stained-glass window,” Akkam says.
Although spas and multiple water features might seem off-brand for haute yet humble country manor living, Tinniswood says the way we use these hotels now isn’t all that different from the way they were used two centuries ago. “These homes were basically designed as private hotels for their owners to entertain in,” he says. “In the 1920s, the Astors would regularly have 40 visitors to Cliveden for the weekend and a big dinner for all the guests in the evening. But, during the day, they would all do different things. Some of them might go shooting, some might go riding and some might write letters in their room.”
Or, perhaps, take a bath, lounge around and fully luxuriate in the appreciation of your manor for the weekend.
If you go:
Carton House stays from £265 through cartonhouse.com.
Fairmont Windsor Park stays from £525 through fairmont.com.
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