First in: Inside the Dower House at Beaverbook hotel, boldly transformed by Nicola Harding
From the windows of the Beaverbrook hotel, you can see nothing but its own green acres of woods and fields, with the Surrey Hills stretching to the horizon and not another building in sight. It is hard to believe you are just 20 miles from Piccadilly Circus.
The hotel takes its name from the previous owner of the estate, the press magnate and Cabinet Minister of the 1920s, 30s and 40s, Lord Beaverbrook. The house was built in 1893, and, like most grand houses of this date and importance, had a Dower House on the estate, for the use of the owner’s widow once the younger generation had taken over the main house. ‘We decided to rebuild the five-bedroom Dower House originally occupied by the Dowager Lady Beaverbrook’ explains Oliver Vigors, CEO of Beaverbrook.
Calm and tucked away behind oak gates, with its flint-knapped and red brick walls, pretty terrace and garden, the Dower House today is a most welcoming sight. It is nestled in a green valley with its own open-air pool nearby. The five bedroom house offers complete privacy, with all the services of the hotel on top. It even has 60 private acres of its own to explore. There is a massage and treatment room just beside the Dower House pool, though guests may also use the hotel spa.
Meals are prepared in the spacious Dower House kitchen by chefs from the hotel. Meals could be anything from a full English breakfast to delicate sushi and sashimi from the hotel’s Japanese Grill, something rib-sticking and British from Mrs Beeton’s restaurant, or healthy superfood salads from the Garden House restaurant, with ingredients picked from the hotel’s kitchen garden.
It takes five minutes from the main hotel in one of its motor buggies, or two minutes by car to the gates of The Dower House. And while the Dower House is booked for exclusive use, which makes it ideal for a romantic weekend or a family reunion, the presence of The Village – 12 recently re-built houses arranged around a square, just beyond its gates, opens up larger possibilities. The Village and Dower House can be combined for, say, a company reunion or a wedding. ‘And, some guests like to bring their personal staff, or a driver, and house them in the Village’ says Oliver Vigors.
The interior designer Nicola Harding has embraced the Arts & Crafts legacy of the building while bringing vivid colours, deeply comfortable furniture, and her own injection of cool modern design to the Dower House. There are pretty patterned wallpapers in the bedrooms, four poster beds hung with broad-striped curtains and bold chequerboard tiles in the bathrooms.
The calm of its position, with only birdsong for company, makes The Dower House a most unusual place to stay, with a pool where you can swim at sunrise or midnight without troubling anyone else. A place where you can come and go in complete seclusion, with the services of a luxury hotel on hand, is indeed something very special.
