Pool, gardens and grounds
Wisteria Farmhouse comes with three acres of lusciously landscaped grounds stolen from the outer edges of the Cotswolds escarpment. There’s not much to disturb the peace here apart from the ripples of the carp in the pond and the excited chatter of kids in the 11-metre outdoor pool open and heated to 28 degrees from May to September.
Eat out there on the patio with strawberries and champagne at the ready and sausages and steaks from The Shambles butchers seared on the gas barbecue. Stay out for garden-party fun over croquet, boules, football, Jenga or Kubb, and year-round tennis on the all-weather court. The children will love the wooden play area. Walk the Wiltshire countryside with your dogs from the door.
Living spaces
Plenty of room here across two beautifully restored farmhouses to socialise or slide away to recharge the social battery, as the mood takes. The single-storey Coach House offers easy access and a log-lit communal area complete with Netflix TV and chatty, open-plan cooking, dining and living.
The Farmhouse comes with indoor-outdoor flow onto the patio and pool area and a lounge with open fireplace and plenty of seating for a night of Netflix streamed over the superfast Starlink broadband. Curl up with a good book beside the crackling fireplace or while away your evenings in the games room over the English pool table or adults’ and kids’ board games.
Cooking and dining
Marinate yourself in true country living as you create culinary masterpieces on the Farmhouse’s four-oven Aga and three-oven electric range in the Coach House. Fill up the three fridges with goodies from Bloomfield Fruit and Veg, Bath Farmers’ Market, Bunch of Bakes and Meat at The Shambles.
If you’d rather kick back and loll around in the pool, call up our pro chefs from Queen and Whippet for everything from an opulent dinner or catered celebration. Or book drop-off freezer meals from Cavendish Cooks prepared locally in their barn in Mells from fresh, quality ingredients.
But sometimes, only the pub will do. Warm up with a Negroni or Aviation in The Longs Arms in South Wraxall, then move on to citrus-cured monkfish or smoked salmon with yuzu yoghurt. Try the rabbit terrine at The George in Bradford-on-Avon. Or head to The Dog and Fox for classic pub grub with countryside views.
Get out to family-friendly Il Fiume for the riverside seating with bridge views and tasty Italian food. Enjoy pancake breakfasts or salt-and-pepper squid at The Bunch of Grapes. Or head to Ravello to be sold on the beautiful architecture as much as the mezze rigatoni and risotto con le cozze.
Bedrooms
In this corner of rural Wiltshire, not much comes between you and your beauty sleep beyond the ripples on the pond and the rustling of wind through the oak boughs in the three-acre gardens. Pick from ten beautifully presented bedrooms sleeping 21 across the two properties and wrap yourself in percale linen.
In the Farmhouse, all rooms offer room for optional toddler floor bed and room for a cot. Beech offers a superking or twin beds and shares a bathroom with Birch, also a superking or twin. Ash is another superking or twin with an en-suite, as is Walnut, which shares a bathroom with Willow, a double with single bunk above. En-suite Oak is another superking or twin.
In the Coach House, you’ve four ground-floor, easy-access bedrooms. Wheat, Barley, Maize and Oats all provide superking or twin-bed accommodation. Barley and Maize share a large family bathroom, Wheat and Oats are en-suite. Most of the Coach Houses spacious bedrooms will take a cot.
Children welcome
What does it take to get kids excited about a holiday? Probably a sense of mystery. Drive them along ever-narrower country lanes just a couple of hours from London and try to keep quiet about what awaits – even though they’ll know it’s a big deal because, with 21 guests, you’ve brought most of home with you.
Stay silent about the 11-metre outdoor pool heated to a toasty 28 degrees and open from May to September. Don’t breathe a word about the games room with its pool table and board games. And definitely don’t mention the three acres of garden they’ll explore with playground to discover or the all-weather private tennis court within it.
How about the garden games? The Jenga, the Kubb (a sort of skittles), the football nets, the boules, the croquet, the cricket and the rounders? Or the summer barbies out on the patio by the pool, the Netflix on the smart TV in both houses? The superfast Starlink Wi-Fi to help them turn their mates green with envy? Keep quiet.
Bring the family dogs (up to five) to preserve that home-from-home feel and explore walks and trails from the door. Collapse at day’s end into luxury, family-friendly bedrooms, which can be set up as twin rooms prior to arrival, in less time than it takes to drift off in between the percale bedding and Hypnos mattresses. Ssh. Not a word.
What people say
High tea and honeyed beauty
Stroll the historic streets of Bradford-on-Avon. Delight in Bath’s honeyed beauty. Meet the lions at Longleat, try wakeboarding and wilderness skills at Cotswold Water Park, or take high tea on the Avon Valley Railway. Play Cumberwell Park, Wiltshire’s only 45-hole golf course. Or take home an English sparkling classic from Bluestone vineyard.
