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Yarlington Lodge is a 12-acre estate that sleeps up to 32 guests and also features a Jacuzzi, a private movie theater, and a tennis court.
Key Points
- Yarlington Lodge offers luxurious accommodations with a main house, coach house, and cottage, plus shared amenities like a pool, cinema, and tennis court.
- The property was designed to bring families together with plenty of space for both private relaxation and communal activities.
- The owners transformed the estate to meet growing demand for exclusive-use stays ideal for multi-generational travel.
When Karen Roos and Koos Bekker, behind some of South Africa’s most exclusive lifestyle projects, acquired a 12-acre estate in the English village of Yarlington, they weren’t sure what to do with it. Ultimately, it became The Newt hotel, close to their home in Somerset, England.
The area—idyllic, rolling green fields punctuated by woolly sheep and old stone walls—looks as though it’s straight out of Postman Pat. At the heart of the new estate sits a 200-year-old main house, once gifted to Katherine Parr by her husband, Henry VIII. It’s a magnificent Georgian building set at the top of a hill, which, from below, looks like an empress presiding over a great green lawn.
For a moment, the couple considered keeping it as a private home. But with growing demand from The Newt guests looking for buyouts suited to multigenerational travel, they turned the estate–which sleeps up to 32 guests across three buildings–into an exclusive-use rental. The buildings, dubbed the Lodge, the Coach House, and the Cottage in the Wall, share a greenhouse, an indoor-outdoor pool, a Jacuzzi, a private movie theater, and a tennis court.
With duck-egg blue window frames and roses climbing the walls, the main house, or the Lodge, belongs in a scene of “Pride and Prejudice.” Once inside, the interior calls to mind Karen Roos’s signature bright and playful aesthetic. The design is exquisitely executed, but it’s also inviting. There’s a sense that it’s meant to be used: it’s okay to curl up on the couch with a cup of tea, read a book in the library, or drink wine on the patio.
Roos, a former magazine editor in South Africa, is a master at seamlessly blending historical with contemporary pieces and has brought that same appeal to Yarlington Lodge. Many of the rooms have canopied ceilings, four-poster beds, campaign-style desks, and cheeky wallpaper (one looks like a jungle, another has textured stripes). Most bathrooms have oversized tubs. In the downstairs bar, polished modern Zieta Studio stools sit opposite an old 1815 painting depicting a sergeant clad in white boots and a regal red jacket.
Much like its interiors, the Lodge is rooted in the idea of play. When I arrived on an early summer evening, the front lawn had been turned into a croquet pitch; balls set out, mallets handed round. Waiters swished past with little pots of lemon sorbet and glasses of Sprankel, a sparkling wine from Babylonstoren, Roos and Bekker’s farm and hotel in South Africa’s Franschhoek wine valley.
After the match, cocktails were served by the pool, while the chef roasted peppers over the firepit. Dinner followed in a glass house by the pool: burrata with raspberries and tomatoes, then local fish served family-style alongside Jersey Royal potatoes and charred peppers with harissa. Dessert was quintessentially English and seasonal: strawberry-and-cream pavlova.
It was the kind of evening when you’d feel like you were in someone’s home. Much like my experience, I imagine a family of guests gathering around the same table, swapping stories as the wine glasses are refilled while platters keep landing on the table. If it’s warm out, someone might even take an evening dip in the pool.
Between Yarlington Lodge’s own activities and full access to The Newt next door, there’s simply too much to do. At the main hotel, there’s a gym, spa, pool, restaurants, farm shops, and gardens, plus orchards, fields, and endless green spaces.
Roos and Bekker have dreamed up Yarlington Lodge as a house where there’s plenty of room to spread out and do your own thing but also enough communal areas so everyone can drift back together at the end of the day. With a full staff, no one fights over who cooks or cleans, and you can focus on what you’re meant to do on a family holiday, which is to simply spend time together.
Nightly rates at Yarlington Lodge start from 10,500 British pounds ($14,155) for exclusive use across the 16 bedrooms at the Lodge, Coach House, and Cottage in the Wall. The house and the cottages can also be booked separately.
Read the original article on Travel & Leisure
