‘Unchanged, you know—like stepping back into the past—to the part of the past that one had loved and enjoyed.’ That, according to Miss Marple, is her verdict on Bertram’s Hotel, the setting of Agatha Christie’s eleventh Miss Marple novel. In today’s parlance, I thought such places no longer existed. But my doubt was firmly shattered after a night at Hartwell House.

Like many of you, I’m sure, the idea of a night away from one’s real life is both a want and a need. If you walk the same patch of land too many times, you begin to feel a bit defeated. This was the general mood when my mother, sister and I all found ourselves craving a holiday. Nothing grand, nothing extravagant—just something for us.

I scoured far and wide for hotels, and I’ll admit, the results were disheartening. Even the suggestions from the ever-wise hive mind of Tat were, in many cases, either far out of our price range or totally devoid of charm. Sometimes both. One contender looked acceptable at first glance, but after closer inspection—and I was inspecting closely, having taken on the responsibility of finding the place—I realised it lacked even a spot for a pre-dinner drink. Essential. Another had interiors decorated in the unfortunate style of today, but without the finish needed to make it feel remotely substantial. I could not, in good conscience, take Liz Elliot—Editor at Large at House & Garden—to such an establishment. She’d have been gracious, of course, but I would have known. We all would have known. And we’d all have been a touch deflated.

So yes, the challenge was considerable. The brief: a beautiful building with well-done interiors (not trendy), some sort of spa facility, good food, and a bucolic setting. Hardly Everest, I admit, but this sort of thing does happen to fall within my wheelhouse. I am not your woman for scaling peaks, but give me the challange of finding a delightful holiday home, a pleasing restaurant—or, in this case, a terrific hotel—and I’ll just about manage.

So when I tumbled across the Hartwell House website, I could hardly believe my ravishing peepers. By god. What was this before me? A hotel not simply decorated, but properly restored. Hartwell House is a 17th-century marvel that once hosted Louis XVIII in exile and, more recently, underwent an extraordinary ten-year restoration after being acquired by Historic House Hotels in the late 1980s. The interiors are neither faddish nor frumpy—thoughtfully put together with historic sensitivity, not a whiff of themed cushions or nonsense. Since 2008, the house has belonged to the National Trust, which rather explains the atmosphere of calm stewardship.

And then there are the grounds—ninety acres of landscaped perfection that brought me a quiet sort of joy every time I looked out. No frantic topiary, no gravelled vistas designed for drone footage, and a refreshing absence of people using them as a backdrop for their deluded grandeur. Just gently sloping lawns, trees old enough to have hosted Louis himself, a still canal reflecting the sky, and a particularly handsome bridge designed by James Gibbs. It’s the kind of setting that made me wish I painted—or, at the very least, carried a slim volume of poetry to sit with among the daffodils, taken in by the utter romance of this Richard Woods creation.

It made me wonder, repeatedly, how I’d managed to miss this hotel until now—why my eyes had been assaulted so often by lesser versions of this very idea. But that, of course, is precisely what makes it a jewel. It’s occupied by a different sort of guest: we found ourselves among a merry cohort of patrons who simply wanted to sit, drink tea, read, drink wine, chat, perhaps nibble a scone or a slice of cake, and watch the day unfold. The kind of day, and the kind of setting, you might otherwise only experience if you happened to know someone who lives in a stately home and—crucially—hasn’t yet lost all their money.

Being the classy establishment it is, they kindly upgraded my room. This meant I was in Room 18—one of the happiest rooms of my life. She was a pink abode with a four-poster bed, a room really fit only for Princess Diana, and as I feel that Lady Di and I would have been the greatest of friends, I felt I too fit right in. As I did my make-up at the kidney-shaped table, looking out over the aforementioned grounds, a different life stretched out before me. One where I had married well and was about to make my way downstairs to greet my guests.

And really—what more can you ask of a hotel than to make you feel entirely disconnected from your real life? In this case, the right kind of disconnection. The glamorous, gently ridiculous, thoroughly restorative kind.

www.hartwell-house.com

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Within the grounds stands the Gothic Revival church of St Mary’s, built in the 1750s as a decorative feature. Now a gentle ruin, it was rescued by the Churches Conservation Trust and restored just enough to let it quietly endure. You can’t go inside, but that hardly matters—it’s all atmosphere

Stolen From The Hartwell House Website. Not The Done Thing To Take Pictures Of Swimming Pools In Use

The End