Review: Heckfield Place

Why book Heckfield Place?

For a serene, city-cool take on the classic English country house escape.

Set the scene

The house, it must be said, is not romantic, its sturdy red-brick exterior too cleaned-up, with an Eighties wing, admittedly overlooking the walled garden, which could be mistaken for a retirement complex. What is going on inside, though, is another story. Light floods into the flagstoned entrance hall, a grand staircase occupies one side, long, inviting hallways and French doors overlook a parterre from which pleasure grounds slope steeply away. There is elegance but a total absence of the classic, swagged formality of, say, Cliveden. Thompson mixes contemporary, mid-century and antique furniture with the same ease with which Kit Kemp blends pattern and colour at Firmdale hotels. He chooses subtle palettes of blush rose, forest green and grey, allowing marble fireplaces in the drawing rooms and the magnificent parkland views to create all the drama necessary. Crossing the lobby, the bar and sitting room are more downtown than Downton, with their handblown glass lights, glitterball and seditiously dark colours.

The backstory

To say Heckfield Place in Hampshire has been much anticipated would be the understatement of the decade. Planning permissions were secured as far back as 2009 to restore the Grade II-listed house after life as an events venue. Yet designers, chefs and other key players of impeccable cred came and went (as well as, presumably, any semblance of a budget): Chris Staines, a former head chef at London’s Mandarin Oriental; managing duo Henry and Char Gray, via careers at Six Senses and Aman. The original 2012 opening date was pushed back. The owner, Gerald Chan, the billionaire head of a private-equity group, just wanted to get it right, I was told. For most of the 19th century Heckfield Place was home to the Lefevre family, most famously Charles Shaw-Lefevre, Viscount Eversley, speaker of the House of Commons. In 1859 it was described as ‘a large and handsome mansion, in an extensive and well-wooded park’. Under Eversley’s head gardener, William Wildsmith, it gained an arboretum and ornamental lake, and became renowned for its exotic hothouse fruits.

The rooms

There are 45 bedrooms in total, variously in the modern wing (candidly called The Corridors) and upstairs in the main house. Detailing is infinitesimal, from a single stem in a vase placed in front of a power socket to floor-length chenille robes and minibars with leather-lined drawers and Champagne coupes. The largest room, The Long Room, in reality an apartment, is an eye-watering £10,000 per night. Of course no suite is ever worth that much, but it is a fabulous loft, with a 180-degree-view private terrace. Far from being also-rans, The Corridors rooms have something of the urban loft about them too. Some have a leafy terrace or a little dressing room. All have silk-smooth Italian bed linen and light settings for every hour and season. Thompson has layered natural textures: furlongs of hand-made rush matting, parquet-laid Welsh slate, velvet cushions and tapestry by Nest founder Lucy Bathurst. With fine balance, he has embraced not only Chan’s Scottish-contemporary-art haul but also the owner’s unlikely penchant for collecting early-English milking stools (I now realise no bathroom should be without one). There is no attempt at faux eccentricity. This is quiet persuasion not pastiche.

Food and drink

Heckfield Place is proof that a country hotel of this size can still feel like a house. Yet the relationship to the estate is tightly woven in. This is largely down to having Gyngell running the kitchen. Inspired by her collaboration at Spring with biodynamic farmer Jane Scotter, she is pushing seed-to-plate yet further here. While every self-respecting hotel these days has a vegetable garden, this place has a farm that follows biodynamic principles. What grows ‘defines the cooking,’ she says.

It defines your stay, too, in every cordial and delicately wholesome plate of food: curd-cheese dumplings with autumn greens, brown beans and hazelnut dukkah, guinea fowl with bread sauce, elderberry syrup and shredded cabbage, or steamed blackberry pudding with roast figs and custard. At Heckfield’s two restaurants – light-filled Marle and the cosier Hearth, with its open fire – you are not only being cooked for, you are being grown for.

The spa

The Bothy is really a space of two halves. The ground floor – especially the pool area – is surrounded by glass; floor-to-ceiling windows and an enormous skylight let light swathe the room, bouncing off the locally-sourced limestone walls and floors (look closely and you can see fossils in the limestone). There are only a handful of sun loungers, and the team will limit the number of people who can use The Bothy at any one time. That luxury of space, plus the adults-only entry and the fact that they won’t be taking day guests from outside the hotel, creates an intimately soul-soothing sort of space. There’s also a yoga studio, a fitness room, a sauna and steam room, and a hydrotherapy pool slipped into the deck overlooking some oaks in the surrounding grounds. But the swimming pool itself is the show-stopper – enormous and glistening, even if the sun is firmly behind the clouds as it was during my visit, thanks to that skylight and the thousands of hand-crafted tiles used here (look out for these again in the treatment rooms downstairs). At one end, a glass wall overlooks the sprawling Heckfield estate, across toward the farm where the hotel’s restaurants (including the new sunroom, a daytime café exclusive to Bothy guests) gather their produce. On warm days, the team can even slide that window all the way open to remove any barrier between guests and the natural world that The Bothy draws on so heavily in its treatments.

The neighbourhood/area

The team will happily arrange excursions made to explore the best of the Hampshire countryside, from riding at Wellington Riding to a Jane Austen tour and wine tastings at nearby vineyards.

The service

Warm and welcoming staff whip up your favourite cocktail or adapt supper reservations quickly and efficiently, without ever getting under your feet.

For families

Children are welcome and will love roaming the estate. Activities that can be arranged for little ones include flower-crown crafts, tree-hunting, woodworking and willow weaving.

Eco effort

The whole place revolves around the fully certified biodynamic market garden and the organic home farm. The estate is also home to (protected) ancient woodlands. The team reduces its carbon footprint by planting and growing trees on-site. Zero single-use plastic is used in rooms or kitchens, and a zero-waste pledge mandates the reuse of food scraps and the recording of food waste.

Accessibility

There are various accessible rooms across multiple categories and access to all of Heckfield's dining and relaxation areas throughout the house.

Anything left to mention

Swimming in the misty lake is a must – even in winter, when one of the in-house wellness practitioners can guide you through a bracing cold-water dip.