|
The Grove, Hertfordshire
This beautiful estate is surrounded by flourishing, emerald-colored gardens and remarkable, innovative sculptures, making this the perfect countryside escape
By: Mary Gostelow
Staying in the impressive Stately Home of England that is The Grove is remarkably agreeable, and addictive.
|
  |
Arrive at The Grove, half an hour north of Heathrow, under an hour west of central London, and you feel as if you have arrived at your own stately home, which happens to come with 300 acres of rolling English landscape, 45,000 trees (some spectacularly ancient) and 500 or so pieces of modern art and sculpture - plus really friendly, professional-yet-genuine, service. The drive off the main A411 is part of the experience. A mile long, it twists down to and over the Grand Union Canal, with working vacation barges moored for the night, and up, flanked by some of the Kyle Phillips golf holes, to this tremendous, three-floor high brick mansion. Think of Lego, brick-colored. Put on a flat top, decorate it with a few roof-top urns, and call it home. Immediately around are about six acres of gardens.
Someone has spent not only money but considerable thought, here. There is lots of outdoor carparking, immediately next to the original mansion and its cleverly-matching early 21st-century West Wing extension. Carefully trimmed, trained and sculpted trees provide shade for your vehicle, when the English weather so demands. Inside the front door, we went straight to reception, where young people in lavender and grey, when asked how many keys were framed on the wall behind, told us '316', with big smiles. We were shown upstairs in an elevator shrouded with full length curtains, and along a twisting corridor again lined in ceiling-hung floor-length curtains. It was like a treasure hunt, for kids of all ages. Some of the 26 bedrooms in the original house - built in the 19th century for Thomas Villiers, former Ambassador to France who became Earl of Clarendon in 1776 - today are themselves hung with velvet curtains with beaded tassels, black ostrich feathers and deep eggplant-colored velvet-trimmed sheers. Designer is Martin Hulbert of Fox Linton Associates (Mary Fox Linton did One Aldwych, London). Each 'manor' room is uniquely decadent but fortunately 18, where we stayed, was a little less theatrical.
The young woman who showed us to the room took time to show us carefully where things were and how they worked. You enter 18, which is floored with 10-inch wide smooth oak boards and walled with palest mushroom throughout, via a small vestibule. The Dressing Room (salon), about eight by 10 yards, has a central eggplant rug, a working log fireplace with necessary tongs that also included a full-size saber, a stone mantel around and a 42-inch plasma screen set on the wall above. Also on this wall is a bold display of 13 rectangular mirrors, each 20 inches wide by 15 inches high: they are set in three vertical rows of five, with two of the spaces in the middle row left empty to accommodate three-light rococo glass candelabra. Other walls' artwork includes a pair of three-dimensional fabric hearts in a recessed picture-frame box, and three five-foot tall, 18-inch wide panels covered in fabric. Reading material consists of literate magazines, Vanity Fair with its must-read account of B. Madoff, National Geographic, The Economist Intelligent Life. You can sit on a burgundy velvet sofa with a back that rises one end as if it if were an opera star lying dramatically on a stage, on two low silvery-grey fabric chairs with beaded tassels (ah, here is that eccentricity) or on the small circular dining table's upright chairs, with backs shaped like ladies' hair fascinators.
Pride of place is given to a full-size Reid-Sohn grand piano, next to a cabinet that holds the minibar, with Hildon water, and Taittinger champagne, and, also in this complex, Ronnefeld tea sachets, a coffee plunger and a Dualit kettle. The room has a lucite desk, with wired internet and also the more-reliable wireless, powered by Swisscom with a home screen that gives full details of today's and tomorrow's weather and do I want to check flight status and alerts? Standing by the phone is a lucite holder for exciting color postcards, headed Indulge, Savour, Challenge, Play, Think. The smooth-surfaced notepaper is Conqueror, with self-seal envelopes, and the notepad comes with a wood pencil. You have the 2009 directory for The Leading Hotels of the World, and a booklet, The Collection, promoting The Grove's siblings, which include The Athenaeum, London. The comprehensive leather-bound ring-binder that is the guide to services is introduced, with a photograph, by General Manager Jane Goodyer, a nice touch. Also, when listing the restaurants and opening hours, a few menu items are included.
'Food and drink have always been essential pleasures for guests at a country estate', I read on the hotel's excellent and colorful site. 'At The Grove, this tradition continues but with a twist. In each of our restaurants, from fine dining in Colette’s, rustic relaxed comfort in The Stables, or the dazzling selection in The Glasshouse, you will find a blend of high quality ingredients, friendly service and stimulating environments. All our food is selected from specialist sources and suppliers and the use of seasonal produce means our menus change on a regular basis. We have an extensive wine cellar with a large range of international wines. Each of our three restaurants has their own bar and outdoor terraces, with unique views, ideal for outdoor entertaining or just to enjoy that drink! Afternoon tea can also be enjoyed in our Mansion Lounges and if you’re making a stay of it and want a picnic hamper then you only have to ask'.
Before going to see all this, we needed to check out the rest of our suite. Pulling back the floor length, deep-mushroom silk curtains, the salon window, and the pair in the adjacent bedroom all revealed views that made us gasp - and there are velvet-covered window seats inviting you simply to gaze. WOW, no wonder the Earl built here. We look out, over 100 yards of manicured lawns and gardens and house-high sequoias that must have been planted by Thomas Villiers himself, across all this to the seemingly-endless rolling golf course. (Anyone, including locals and hotel guests, by the way, can pay merely for a fee-per-round, which is a jolly good way of filling all the property's 227 rooms.) The bed is centrally set, looking out at all this. The six foot-high headboard (eggplant fabric held by shiny steel) becomes a screen forming a narrow walkway to the bathroom, through white double doors behind. The bathroom, which has The White Company toiletries and lots of white linens, and waffle robes, hosts a freestanding oval tub, a glass-walled shower big enough for the whole family, a long counter with two inset oval basins, and possibly the world's largest electrically-heated towel rack, all of 18 sq ft total, with a few forward-hung unheated rails for hanging swimwear if, say, you did not want it right next to the actual heat. The square tissue box has a highly-magnified green leaf cover, matching five square green and white on black paintings above the tub.
We went down the 31 stairs of the 18th century Mansion's original staircase, its banisters supported by a randomly-set collection of plain, small-twisted and big-twisted wood rods. There's a central traditional chandelier and, on a wall, a lifesize black and white photo of a giraffe about to eat a chandelier. Down at ground level, you are confronted by a huge painted-tree silhouette, cleverly spread over 56 just-separated canvas panels. Onwards, you walk past a looped color video of a blossoming garden with, somewhat incongruously, a naked gardener in a straw hat. Then there is a succession of Mansion Lounges, the old house's reception rooms. You have a blue room, darkest nearly-black blue, with painted columns and black-blue Murano chandelier. Our favorite is the oval Library, shaped just like that, it ceiling-high walls shelved with a collection of must-reads, from heavy modern art tomes to left-by-guests latest paperback novels, from Gran Teatro La Fenice (where Salma Hayek and François-Henri Pinault were to marry two weeks after our visit - read more here) to Wilbur Smith. There are all the board games
|
you can think of. In the center of this pale cream heaven is a pair of tomato-colored squash sofas, facing each other. Behind each is a five-foot wavy screen, mirrored each side so you have the most extraordinary distortions, like at pier-side entertainment booths when one was even more child-like.
We tried making our way indoors, along a total building that must be nearly half a mile from one end to another, but we found ourselves in the highly modern meetings and conference space. This has its own entrance and numerous flexible rooms that can accommodate up to 500 in one place. A young man juggling a vertically-set tabletop from one room to another suggested we might do better going outside. We therefore had a scenic arboretum tour, past sequoias and gardens and outdoor sculptures, until we reached The Grove Spa - Sequoia (I must say, by the way, that signage everywhere is exemplary - there are clear signs to wherever you want to go, inside or out).
The spa is a two-floor fitness dream. A really helpful receptionist showed how the pressure-pad locker keys work. The women's locker area is big, airy, clean and I liked having a single-sex sauna, and an ultra-efficient spinner to dry swimwear. My locker had robe and slippers and towel. Upstairs, the pool feels as if it is in an old barn, with a rough-beam ceiling overhead. Cleverly, the stone surround is deliberately not-smooth, to prevent you slipping. This is a serious pool, 25 yards long and wide enough to accommodate at least ten lappers at any time and, what a relief, no children after five (they have their own pool in Anouska’s Kids Club). We also had a look at the Technogym, another serious place, with five joggers and the Technogym key system working. It is impressive how international the spa menu is, by the way, with Indian dosha-specific massages, Balinese treatments and Thai herbal heat massages. There is ESPA Chakra balancing with hot stones, and ESPA total indulgence pre/post natal stuff. Manicures and pedicures are by Leighton Denny.
A family operating as Ralph Trustees Ltd owns The Grove, which opened in 2003. Since then it has once again been cherished, as undoubtedly it was in the Earl of Clarendon's day. His descendants had finally moved out in 1920, after which it became first a girls' school and then the headquarters of railroad intelligence during World War II (how times have changed!). Ralph Trustees saw a great opportunity in the location, and took it...
They named the fine dining restaurant, Collette's, after their mother. It is closed Sunday-Monday so we headed for the more-informal The Stables. This was lots of fun. There is a bar with stable stall seating one end, and a restaurant area, with unadorned wood tables set with white-edged glass hurricane lamps holding lit nightlights, practical white Steelite china and red-lined linen napkins rather like American colonial kitchen linens. 'The restaurant serves homely comfort food in simple yet stylish surroundings', says the website. 'Bare boards, oak tables and exposed roof timbers are evocative of New England and create a rustic, relaxed environment. Wide doors open on to a dining terrace with sweeping views over the championship golf course'. I sat on a brown leather bankette, looked at the brown leather-held menu which told me that the renowned horse artist George Stubbs 1724-1806 used to paint in the then-active stables. Dennis from Latvia, in a cowboy shirt and blue jeans, brought a glass of Ormonde Vineyards Ondine Darling Chardonnay 2007 (glass wines are available in two sizes, and chemical-free wines are listed in red), and a Boddington's draft beer for my husband. A Baltic-type wide-strip wood box held slices of good brown and white bread, with an accompanying pot of balsamic and olive oil. My wild rocket and parmesan salad had a tasty balsamic-basil dressing, and then I went on to what should be a signature in any British restaurant, 'fish and chips'. The Stables version is a big slab of just-battered fish, deliciously tempura-crisp outside and moist within, with lots of short, stubby, fries, and half a lemon, a little pot of tartare sauce, half a dozen caper berries on stalks and own-made mushy peas, minted peas that had been bashed and mashed a few minutes before. I ordered a side of purple-sprouting broccoli, steamed please.
It was really agreeable. There was low background music but you could hear yourselves, but not others, speak. Some of the kids were playing video games on small players brought by parents, others were fascinated by chefs' activity in the open kitchen. The kids loved breakfast the following morning, too. At The Glasshouse restaurant, near hotel reception, it starts at 7:30 on holidays (7am, work days) and by 7:32 that holiday Monday there were two family groups already seated. One mum, escorting a two-year old in its hotel-provided towel robe, said 'this is the best hotel for children I have ever seen - many hotels find them a nuisance but here they truly welcome them'. About a quarter of the pre-set tables, indeed, already had wood high-chairs, with straps. Even adults, however, adored that breakfast. Light-and-easy background music, one wall featuring apparently 5,000 spoons somehow balanced from the handle end, a charming local-guy chef extolling the succulent fresh dates, and a serving team from most countries in Europe and beyond... what more could one want? I loved having proper mugs - Villeroy & Boch, of course - rather than teeny tea-cups that let the brew get cold. I admired the really-fresh juice, the copious whole and prepared fruits, the best-in-show Ferme de Peupliers yogurts, the flavorful butter, Tea Together preserves and the excellent, strong-flour and healthy breads.
Presumably some of the young ones were going off later to today's special activities, it being the Easter Monday holiday. There was a three-hour Alice in Wonderland workshop, an Easter Walk with hot chocolate and cookies, remote-control car-racing, a garden tour with the head gardener, a Tweedledum v. Tweedledee sports day. Hosted by the West End production company, Perform, there was also a real Madhatter's Tea Party, a hunt for the White Rabbit, messy chocolate lessons, Easter egg hunt and croquet with the Queen of Hearts.
Also making an appearance were the Mad March Hare and Dormouse.
At any time they could go to Anouska's Kid's Club, which has a nursery for any little darling from three-months up, and an indoor pool. They could take bikes, to tour the estate with their parents (who might be playing golf - getting in practice for the grand final of the Grove Golf Challenge, October 12th, 2009 - or tennis). The indoor Games Room has Wii's, PS3s and XBoxes. In summer there is a real sandy beach in the superb Walled Garden. A short distance away, you can ride horseback or visit to Bowman’s Farm and Falconry Centre - , Whipsnade Zoo is 30 minutes', and Legoland 40 minutes' drive. At the hotel itself, for future big holiday weekends yet more one-off events are planned, as they are for Christmas, and for New Year (suggestion, book ahead, fast).
But you know what, even the forever-young with no kids in tow have such a good time at The Grove that they too would rush back, anytime.
The Grove, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom
Sign up for Confidential Newsletter
Send this article to a friend
View other Away Nights Articles
|
| |   | | Four Seasons Hotel Hampshire, EnglandFrom London's Heathrow airport, it is about 35 minutes' drive, roughly south-west. From central London, allow at least an hour by car, although you ma... more
By: Mary Gostelow |
| |  | | Shangri-La's Rasa Sayang Resort & SpaThis iconic resort, on Penang Island, off the Malaysian coast, reopened September 28th after a 21-month rehab, much needed after 33 years of action. more
By: Mary Gostelow |
| | |
|
| | | | Sign up for the Free WOW Confidential Newsletter |  |
Advertisement | |
BACK
