English Countryside

Within an hour or two of London lies the England of the great country house: the honey-stone villages of the Cotswolds, the parklands of Berkshire and Oxfordshire, the gardens of Surrey and Hampshire. Here luxury takes the form of an estate — a historic house, a walled garden, a long table and a landscape shaped over centuries.

The English country house grew from the medieval manor into the great estates of the eighteenth century, when Capability Brown and his successors reshaped whole landscapes into lakes, clumps of trees and long views. The counties west and south of London hold the densest concentration: Berkshire and its royal parkland around Windsor, Oxfordshire with Blenheim Palace, and Hampshire with the New Forest and the chalk valleys of the Test and Itchen.

Further west, the Cotswolds keep their honey-coloured limestone villages, built on the wealth of the medieval wool trade. Life here follows the shooting calendar, the racing fixtures and the garden year, and the best houses serve produce from their own kitchen gardens, farms and estates. London is rarely more than ninety minutes away by road or rail.

The English social season gives the year its shape. Cheltenham hosts its jump-racing festival in March; May brings the Badminton Horse Trials and the Chelsea Flower Show; June belongs to Royal Ascot, and early July to the Henley Royal Regatta on the Thames. Glyndebourne opens its summer opera season in the Sussex Downs in May and runs through August.

Spring, when bluebells cover the woodlands in late April and May, is the countryside at its freshest. Autumn brings colour to the parks and the opening of the game season, and winter is the time for log fires and long walks between short days. The weather is mild and changeable throughout; no month is without rain.

Within an easy drive of London: Cliveden House, the Italianate mansion above the Thames at Taplow; Coworth Park, Dorchester Collection, in parkland near Ascot; Heckfield Place, a Georgian house on its own Hampshire estate; Lime Wood in the heart of the New Forest; and Estelle Manor, a restored manor house on an eighty-five-acre estate at Eynsham in Oxfordshire.

None of these houses belongs to a group programme, and LVXVRY advises on and arranges each stay directly with the hotel — whether for a weekend away from London, a stay built around Royal Ascot or Henley, or a longer circuit that moves from the Thames valley to the New Forest and on to the Cotswolds, with private transfers and estate activities arranged in advance.