The hotel has salt steam room, a spa with sauna and amazing pool leading to a heated outdoor hydrotherapy pool, as well a glass walled gym tucked away in the garden. As for the staff, they are superb: bright, delightful yet professional and noticeably excited about the future of the benign realm in which they find themselves.

Rooms are divided between those in the main house, where the three Garden Rooms are the loveliest and the Loft Rooms the cosiest, and those in the Clock House and Stable Yard. All are different, all carefully designed by Karen Roos.

There are two restaurants: the elevated, glass-walled Garden Café overlooking the walled Parabola and surrounding countryside and gardens, and the Botanical Rooms in the hotel, with its fabulous, homely open kitchen. In the Garden Café you can enjoy excellent home-grown vegetables accompanied by barbecued beef and pork, cheeses and charcuterie served with delicious sourdough apple bread, honey and homemade pickles. Steamed new potatoes from the garden were cooked to perfection and ice creams and the estate’s apple juices could not be resisted.