1. Fowlescombe Farm, Ugborough, Devon
This freshly reimagined Devon farm starts welcoming its first guests next month. Ten smart suites have been created in former farm buildings at the heart of the 500 acres: some rooms wrapped in warm oak panelling, others with soaring double-height living rooms, all have mattresses handmade by Devon company Naturalmat using wool from Fowlescombe’s own sheep.
As beautiful as the design is, it’s food that is central to the vision. “We want to immerse guests in British farming — reconnecting them with where their food comes from and why it matters,” says owner Caitlin Owens, who also runs The Millbrook Inn down in South Pool. At The Refectory restaurant, chef Tom Westerland whips up full Fowlescombe fry-ups (using only produce from the farm), low-waste lunch bites (garden vegetable soup with yesterday’s bread croutons) and locally sourced dinners (in spring, likely featuring freshly picked radishes and the eagerly anticipated rhubarb glut).
Getting a taste of farm life goes far beyond the plate though, with foraging walks, bread and sausage-making workshops, and floristry classes in the greenhouse to get hands dirty and heads cleared.
Doubles from £410 per night, including breakfast, snacks and dinner, and activities; fowlescombe.com
2. Louma, near Bridport, Dorset
In 2019, when Louis and Emma Steyn bought Spence Farm, with its 100 acres of farmland and vines in the Marshwood Vale, they meant for it to be a family home. But within weeks a new vision emerged, one of a retreat rooted in nature. This month saw its official launch as Louma, with 17 elegant bedrooms spread across the farmhouse, restored stables, barns, and locally crafted shepherds’ huts. “The land and our animals are at the core of all we do,” says head of farming Rachel Hayball.
Children will love the animal hours, feeding newborn calves and lambs and collecting eggs from the chicken coop. There are pony treks and bee safaris, woodland walks and wine tastings. Food comes from the land: sausages from Louma’s pigs and honey from the hives for breakfast, garden salads and the farm’s Red Ruby beef, slow-cooked for 48 hours, for dinner. There’s a different kind of nourishment at the wellness barn, with its pools, yoga, breathwork classes and massages. Meanwhile, the Jurassic Coast is close by for bracing sea dips and fossil hunting on the beach.
Shepherds’ Huts sleeping two from £470, Stone Barn attic room (also sleeping two) from £490 a night, full-board, including some activities; loumafarmandretreat.co.uk
3. Wraxall Yard, Lower Wraxall, Dorset
With their polished concrete floors, exposed beams and locally crafted Another Country furniture, the five cottages at Wraxall Yard are the image of contemporary rural design. Look closer, however, and there are also rise-and-fall countertops in the stylish ply-fronted kitchens, and grab rails in the sleek white-tiled bathrooms. Creating something aesthetically pleasing and accessible was always the aim for father and daughter Nick and Katie Read, when they set about transforming a dilapidated dairy on the family’s organic farm.
Nick’s mother had multiple sclerosis and used a wheelchair, but as an artist and designer she was often offended that adaptations made interiors look ugly or institutional. Here, that couldn’t be further from the case and the project, the work of architect Clementine Blakemore, was nominated for the 2024 Riba Stirling Prize. The cottages all look out on to a shared courtyard, and from there, a boardwalk winds through orchards down to a chalk stream. “We do guided ‘wheels’, talking about the birds, plants and otters in this special habitat,” says Nick. “This contact with nature is something disabled visitors are often deprived of and has a remarkable effect on people.”
Three nights in Ladymeade, a cottage sleeping three, from £414; wraxallyard.co.uk
4. Pennard Hill Farm, Shepton Mallet, Somerset
If farming is the new rock ’n’ roll, Pennard Hill — which hosts glamping pop-ups during Glastonbury — is the place to get into its rhythm. In recent years, Pippa and Tom Godber-Ford Moore have expanded from their festival weekends, converting an old tractor shed into a dining barn for open-fire feast nights (the next is on April 5). “Spring is the best time of year for foraged wild greens, the new young growth makes punchy salads to accompany our own meats,” says Tom. He’ll also be cutting into the new Mangalitza culatello and coppa — made from their own pigs — which have been slowly maturing all winter.
The couple have added suspended spherical tree tents and a hidden cabin in the woods for overnighters too, and there are a couple of cottages, as well as a romantic hide-out in a former hay barn with a wrought iron bed under the original racking beams. June’s mudbath isn’t Glastonbury’s only festival either: come the first weekend in May for fire ceremonies, dragons and Green Men as part of the town’s Beltane celebrations.
The Haybarn, a cottage sleeping two, and tree tents (also for two), from £130; pennardhillfarm.co.uk
5. Ashlack, Grizebeck, Lake District
Decked out in baronial oil paintings, life-sized nymph statues and draped four-poster beds, Ashlack Hall, at the southern fringes of the Lakes, is far from the average farmstay. When Bob Keegan’s parents bought the 16th-century manor house at blind auction in 1989, there was a tree growing through one of the staircases. They renovated it over the next decade and then, in 2020, their son took over the reins, after training at the Ballymaloe Cookery School in Cork and cheffing down south. He and wife Jenna Freak set about opening the house for stays, reinvigorating the walled garden to serve produce to their guests.
Today they also run sheep over Burney fell, keep cattle, the odd pig and a livery yard. In the guest wing, rooms might have an antique chaise longue or a rococo sofa, shelves heaving with leather-bound books, while the converted barn, King’s Head Cottage, is decorated in floor to ceiling murals. Sunday lunches and small plate suppers in the dining room might mean torched mackerel with rhubarb and fennel from the garden, or rump of Ashlack’s Hebridean hogget with homegrown purple-sprouting broccoli. Between feasts take the couple’s tip and hike to Beacon Tarn for a swim — with no road access it’s a peaceful stomp over the fell.
Doubles from £100; ashlack.com
6. Barneys Ruins, near Maghera, Northern Ireland
Architect Patrick Bradley’s family have farmed this land, deep in the County Derry countryside, for more than 100 years. One of those was his great-uncle Bernard, known locally as Barney, the remains of whose 19th-century stone home now sit beneath an ultra-contemporary cottage, with huge windows, a large cantilevered section and zippy pops of yellow. At night, when it’s lit up, it looks like it’s floating.
Next door, a former barn, which once housed the family bull, has been given a new metal roof and cosy bed nook. Cattle still come by this ancient clachan — peering at guests in the pair of outdoor tin baths — on their way to munch grass in the field, soon to be filled with wobbly newborn lambs and calves too.
At nearby Drumnaph Wood (a five-minute drive) spot buzzards and sparrowhawks while winding along the waymarked walking trails, or head a little further to Garvagh Forest which by late next month will be carpeted in bluebells, before a rewarding pint of Guinness at Friels Bar in Swatragh.
Barn from £90 and cottage from £150 a night (both sleep 2); kiphideaways.com
7. Guardswell Farm, Perthshire, Scotland
From a family farm and food hut in the rolling hills of Perthshire, Guardswell has grown into its own ecosystem: a place that rears animals, grows vegetables and makes cider, but also a place to stay, to learn new skills and join pop-up suppers. There are now three cabins (with a fourth on the way) and three self-catering houses, ranging from a light-filled cottage with views over the Firth of Tay to a big farmhouse with sheepskin blankets on beds and a red Aga in the kitchen.
The calendar is bursting with events to bring visitors closer to the land. April is an intense month of lambing at the farm, which has a flock of Hebridean sheep. Come in May for the Scottish cider festival, Pressed (May 10) — which includes Guardswell-made Diggers Cider among the tastings and live music — the monthly local produce market (May 14) or a cheesemaking workshop (May 23). “Guardswell is somewhere people can slow down a little, understand what soil feels like and listen to the birds,” says owner Anna Lamotte. This is the definition of a modern farmstay with people, as well as nature, at its heart.
Cabins sleeping two from £110, Guardswell Cottage (which sleeps four) from £160; guardswell.co.uk
8. Telfit, near Richmond, North Yorkshire
The most northerly of the Yorkshire Dales, Swaledale is God’s Own Country at its wildest and most unspoilt. Here, on the edge of a glacial bowl with views to the moor above and a bubbling beck below, Telfit’s restored Georgian farmhouse is where to make time stand still. It’s offered as an exclusive-use rental, sleeping up to 22, and like everything on this regenerative farm — run by Oliver Leatham, his wife Lucy and son Ben — there’s a deep, quiet thoughtfulness to the place.
Furniture and art from Tennants Auctioneers in nearby Leyburn give it a lived-in grandeur, and guests can order ahead to have the fridge stocked with grass-fed steaks and lamb chops from Ben’s eatTelfit farm shop down the road, which they can barbecue on the Big Green Egg in the garden. Outside, too, is a sauna, wooden hot tub and giant firebowl — the place to soak up the peace and watch sheep being mustered like a dance across the hillside, as the calls of birds echo along the valley. Stride out for walks along the beck and up to the trig point on the moor, or it’s five miles to the historic market town of Richmond with its Norman castle.
Sleeps 22 in 10 bedrooms (with nine bathrooms), from £4,000 for two nights; telfit.co.uk
9. Nest Farmhouse, Docking, Norfolk
London restaurants Nest and Michelin-starred St Barts are much-loved for their creative menus featuring seasonal British produce. So it makes sense that for their latest outpost, the team went back to the source on a 1,000-acre farm in North Norfolk, near Houghton Hall and the Sandringham Estate. The owners of Docking Lodge Farm were looking for someone to take over their converted cattle shed, and it now houses five bedrooms above a buzzy dining room, all with views across fields that grow potatoes, carrots, parsnips and barley.
Many of those vegetables feature on the menu, which might also include wild garlic soup or braised lamb neck. Other ingredients are sourced nearby: oysters from Brancaster, crab from Wells-next-the-Sea, beef from Heath’s Farm in Great Massingham. “Unlike our London sites we can be hyperlocal,” says Johnnie Crowe, one of Nest’s trio of founders. “We also forage for things like fennel, elderflower and sea herbs.” Next month kicks off a series of Saturday barbecues in collaboration with local breweries and wineries (on April 12 and 19 with Duration Brewing), which will continue through the summer down by the pond.
Doubles from £160 including breakfast; nestfarmhouse.co.uk
10. Restaries, Halesworth, Suffolk
Gem Boner and Thom Scherdel — former Soho House communications director and fashion consultant respectively — are the first to admit they didn’t have much farming experience before they moved to Paradise Farm, 20 minutes inland from Southwold, in 2023. With three pygmy goats acquired when they arrived, their 12 acres is now also home to Valais Blacknose sheep, Kunekune piglets, a trio of baby alpacas and a brood of Burford Brown chickens “sourced from Clarence Court at a price that amused the local farmers,” says Scherdel.
The hens produce eggs for guests who stay in the beautifully converted outbuildings. The three-bedroom Cider Store is painted in apple green and buttery yellow, the sofas upholstered in fabrics made from recycled plastic bottles. The Gate House, hidden amid woodland, has a mezzanine bed made up in Floks wool bedding. The couple will add the Log Cabin and Cart Lodge this summer, as well as restorative retreats, workshops and events.
Beyond the farm gates, paddle-board down the River Blyth estuary, tuck into asparagus and foraged morels at the Greyhound Inn and book ahead for the Aldeburgh Festival in June.
The Gate House, a cottage sleeping two, from £230 per night, the Cider Store (sleeping 6) from £500; restaries.com
Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning
