It had all started so well. The plan: a multigenerational weekend gathering for an (ahem) landmark birthday of mine close to where my sister lives in Shropshire. A treat for the three generations of our family in luxurious surroundings. If you know Shropshire (as we thought we did), this was an ambitious plan. Despite its central location, pretty countryside villages and tempting local produce, in my experience it has never overdelivered in terms of luxury hotels and houses.
Until now, that is. Ellerton Hall — built in the 1830s but newly available for private hire — ticked all our boxes and others we hadn’t thought about. There was ample space for myself, my husband, our two kids, two grandparents, one sister and a nephew — and there were luxury rooms for her best friend and family too.
But who knew that Covid would still be scuppering party plans in 2023? First hit was my husband. Then, on the morning we were leaving home to go there, the grandparents. Later that day the best friend’s husband cried off (though it’s possible he was just scared by the imminent outnumbering).
On the two-generational, grandparent-less three-hour journey to Shropshire, we resolutely worked out potential reasons for Daddy, Granny and Grandad to be cheerful for not making it. The accommodation would be under-par, perhaps, or have too many steps — maybe draughty doorways or shonky crockery.
OK, we were clutching at straws, because as we drove up the winding path that crosses the estate’s 470 acres it became very clear very quickly that there were no such reasons to be cheerful. From the friendly welcome (the house manager met us in a nearby village to escort us in) to the picture-perfect woodland setting, we realised that anyone deprived of an opportunity to visit this grandest of weekend retreats deserved to feel rather put out.
If you don’t fall for the approach or the cheery light-filled hall (looks old but smells new), it’ll only be moments before you’re charmed if you’re lucky enough to meet the hall’s self-effacing owner, John Gough.
Gough’s grandfather was a tenant farmer here in the 1930s. Nearly a century later Gough, 63, owns the land and the “big house” that he admired for so many years, having negotiated its purchase from its long-time owner — his father’s former landlord — during the pandemic.
Chef James Sherwin’s Hogget, furikake and fermented plum
Gough’s voice cracks with emotion as he tells me how he proudly showed his octogenarian father around the place, entering not through the back door, where his father would once go to pay rent, but the front. It was the first time that his father had used the main entrance.
The renovation took two years. Thanks to Gough, his wife, Lucy, and the Shropshire-based designer Katie Briggs, the interior pays homage to its period character yet feels fresh and contemporary. It comprises six en suite bedrooms, a morning room with a wood-burning stove, a large family kitchen, a drawing room with floor-to-ceiling sash windows and a spectacular dining room with a 26ft-long table. While it has all the ingredients you’d see in contemporary hotels — Fired Earth tiles, Farrow & Ball and Little Greene paint and carpets from the sustainability champions Weaver Green — there is no sense of designing by numbers. Many of the original furnishings have been kept and upcycled, including the drawing-room carpet and silk curtains. There is no nook or cranny where you might think, “Oh, it could do with a comfy chair here.” The result is formal grandeur with a cosy, homely appeal.
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Plans are now under way for phase two, which will be the renovation of a second building to add four more double rooms. The new wing will have its own entrance as well as access from the main house so it can be rented separately.
A first-floor conservatory has views across the elegant gardens, while in the plush cinema room, the gargantuan corner sofa is matched by the huge screen and, erm, you’d have to ask the kids about the rest. The minute mine discovered it they barely left — until they found the hot tub to splash about in, the manicured lawns and towering, ancient trees to charge noisily around and the tennis courts for endless, haywire games. My nephew (sporty and stronger than he realises) consistently hit the tennis ball over the fence, until the ball girls (my sister and I) finally lost their cool. “Is there any way you could stop doing that?” my sister yelled.
Finally we got our turn on the court. “I haven’t played for years!” my sister said enthusiastically, before casually whacking the ball over the fence. The ball boys? Nowhere to be seen; too busy playing table tennis in the stripped-back, brick-walled games room. A beautification is being considered, but I hope they don’t zhuzh it too much. It’s a tempting canvas to create on, but it’s also perfect just as it is, for everything from bad-weather yoga to indoor games.
Anyway, we didn’t get any bad weather, other than an overnight storm that blew away the barbecue cover that we had embarrassingly left lying around (and, even more embarrassingly, didn’t even notice was missing until we left). Indeed the dry, mild days gave us no excuse not to tear ourselves away from the house and into the countryside beyond for walks and chats with the friendly locals.
The celebratory pinnacle of the weekend was to be dinner on Saturday night. Gough had arranged for James Sherwin of the Wild Shropshire restaurant to drop by and create one of his signature terroir-focused seasonal meals. The kids had been excused the preteen purgatory of the ten-course tasting menu, so with just us grown-ups at the end of the very long dining table it could all have been a bit of an anti climax were it not for the sheer force of personality of Sherwin and his bubbly sommelier, Jo Turner.
As we drank an introductory glass of Langham blanc de blancs, the kids joined us for perfectly pitched sharing plates of deliciously fun food (fill-them-yourself flatbreads, chicken, steak, tiny potatoes and — drumroll — salad). They dug in with their fingers as encouraged, before leaving us to a dining extravaganza à trois.
As in the restaurant, there was no advance menu, but instead a list of ingredients, many of which were exotically unfamiliar — kombu, birch syrup, white shoyu. Every mouthful packed a punch (although we should have picked up on the clue from the pickles — with a creative wine pairing for every course, pickled is exactly how we would end up too). The only gastronomic mismatch was a fashionable orange wine, but you can blame that on our tastebuds rather than Turner. One dish was so good that we were forced to lick our plates clean (I have photographic evidence). We rolled up to bed and attempted (and failed) to walk it all off the next day.
We did at least find one reason to be cheerful that the full party didn’t make it. We’ll have to go back again — with a full house.
Claire Irvin was a guest of Ellerton Hall, which has three nights’ self-catering for 12 from £2,950 (ellertonhall.com). Ten privately catered courses from Wild Shropshire from £67pp (wildshropshire.net)
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