Estelle Manor

About

At Estelle Manor, near North Leigh in Oxfordshire, the arrival does not need much choreography. A gravel drive, honey coloured stone, clipped hedges, old trees and striped parasols do the work before anyone has offered to take your bag. The house looks like an English country hotel drawn from memory, until you step inside and realise someone has been having a great deal of fun with the memory. That someone is Roman and Williams, the New York studio behind some of America’s most atmospheric hotels. Appointing them for an Oxfordshire manor sounds risky, almost like asking a jazz musician to restore a harpsichord. Yet the result avoids costume drama. This is not a postcard version of the Cotswolds, but a richly worked country house world of oak panelling, carved fireplaces, fringed lampshades, patterned sofas, brass bathroom fittings, dark floral pictures and freestanding baths positioned with splendid confidence. The manor is the rural sibling of Maison Estelle in Mayfair, although the mood here is looser. The members club polish remains, but the estate gives it air. Guests sleep in the main house, converted stables, cottages or private houses, so the place feels sociable rather than sealed off. It helps that the building has lived a few lives already. The estate goes back to the eighteenth century, the present Neo Jacobean mansion was rebuilt between 1904 and 1908 for the Mason family, whose money came with industrial muscle rather than old aristocratic dust. Later it became a police training college, a fact that gives extra pleasure to the sight of guests drifting towards the Roman style baths in robes. Food and drink are part of the rhythm rather than an afterthought: long lunches, garden minded plates, clubby rooms, good lighting and enough choice to make staying on site perfectly defensible. Oxford and the Cotswolds are close, but Estelle Manor’s real trick is that it turns the excursion into the optional part.