On the northern fringes of the Cotswolds, just before the villages turn from ridiculously picture-perfect pretty back into merely pretty, a new addition to this celebrity-strewn region’s hospitality scene re-emerges from a two-year £25 Million pound restoration. Dumbleton Hall, in the sleepy little off-grid village of the same name, and now under American ownership, was constructed nearly 200 years ago by Cotswolds wool magnate Edward Holland, though outwardly little has changed. It still owns its spectacular setting, shaded by ancient cedar trees and framed in a timeless undulating countryside, much as it always has done.
In the years following WWII, the upper-crust world of country house parties that had prevailed at such palatial properties since Victorian times crumbled in the face of punitive taxes and a recalibrated social order. By 1974, over 250 of them had been demolished, with Dumbleton Hall itself on the condemned list. Reprieve arrived in the unlikely proletarian form of the Post Office, or the Post Office Fellowship of Remembrance (POFR) to be precise, who purchased the property in 1959 as a recreational facility for its staff and a place of homage to the almost 13,000 of its employees who lost their lives in both world wars. A small garden of remembrance is still hidden away in the grounds. In 1995, the POFR opened up the property to the public, with Dumbleton Hall becoming a hotel for the first time until it was acquired in 2021 by Indiana-based fund manager turned real estate entrepreneur, Paul Vezolles.
It sometimes seems as if nearly all these surviving aristocratic estates turned country house hotels, where paying guests now do their best to replicate the manners and mores of people long since dead from a world long since disappeared, have all somehow ended up in the Cotswolds. There’s little doubt that this captivating cluster of chocolate box villages and towns within easy reach of the British capital is as popular now as it’s ever been, resembling to London what the Hamptons is to New York – with an upwardly mobile price tag to match.
Dumbleton Hall doesn’t fall into the frenetic uber-trendy category of Cotswold hideaway, and neither is it located in one of the increasingly over-visited iconic Cotswold villages. This is a traditionally configured, albeit unstuffy, yet supremely relaxing iteration of the rural retreat. Dumbleton village, whilst every bit as charming as you’d expect, is quite diminutive, and particularly peaceful. It doesn’t, regrettably, even have a pub, with the closest one might get to noise nuisance being the occasional thwack of willow on leather from the cricket green sited somewhat idyllically between the Hall and the village.
The overall style template leans heavily into the traditional, with widespread use of Little Green paints and Morris & Co wallpapers successfully enhancing the beautifully preserved public areas. Stunning original plasterwork on the walls and ceilings of the lounges and bars, together with extensive oak panelling, including around fireplaces, which are lit on the flimsiest of pretexts, renders it all as resplendent as when the property was unveiled two centuries ago.
Aside from a delightfully irreverent colourful papier mâché riposte to the usual taxidermized animal heads, halfway up the grand staircase, the period design palette predominates throughout. While it might at times veer dangerously close to predictability, keeping the restyling within traditional parameters has produced a property of great warmth and charm into which guests are relaxing from right across the threshold.
The number of rooms and suites has been scaled down to 34, no two the same, ranging through 6 categories from Cosy rooms to the master suites with huge four-poster beds, free-standing baths, expansive his-and-hers rain showers and Penhaligon’s toiletries. Previously pokey rooms have been opened up and the property’s huge bay windows undivided to reveal the sweeping views they were originally intended to convey. There are also plans for treehouse type accommodation out in the surrounding woodland.
The 19 acres of grounds under the auspices of celebrity horticulturist and 6-time Chelsea best-in-show winner, Chris Beardshaw, also, conveniently, a Cotswolds neighbour, incorporate some truly magnificent mature trees, a story-book lake to picnic beside, and a croquet lawn.
A standout feature of the newly configured hotel, though, is undoubtedly the gastronomic offering with a kitchen presided over by Executive Head Chef, Dean Westcar, who joins from Michelin-starred Lucknam Park. A former finalist of both MasterChef: The Professionals and National Chef of The Year, Dean’s unfussy, yet supremely sophisticated cuisine, alone, makes it well worth seeking out this secluded little corner of the Cotswolds. Though it gets better!
With Le Manoir aux Quat Saisons, Raymond Blanc’s revered 2 Michelin-starred temple of Anglo-French haute cuisine, closed for extensive renovations, some of the Manoirs highly skilled staff have fetched up at Dumbleton, including Head Pastry Chef Dan Jarvis, and the manager of the hotel’s stylishly conceived restaurant, Cedar 1905. The name derives from a couple of wonderful Cedars of Lebanon outside the window, although plans to move the car park from in front of them might benefit from being expedited. While Cedar 1905 has found its way into the Michelin Guide in no time at all, it’s the plans for a second, even more gastronomically attuned restaurant that are currently generating a buzz of excitement.
What was formerly the Hall’s orangery, probing out into the grounds and benefiting from gorgeous views on three sides, will become, in early 2027, a new fine dining space. To be adorned with £200K worth of Japanese maple, and with its currently screeded-over original mosaic floor brought back to life, this will undoubtedly become an immediate noteworthy addition to the Cotswolds’ already outstanding array of epicurean offerings.
As Dean Westcar confided following a delicious dinner that incorporated his exceptional Cornish crab crumpet starter and Dan’s outstanding blackcurrant clafoutis dessert, he will want to ease into the new space, planned for just 24-28 covers, as deftly as he can. That might prove wishful thinking, as once it’s operational, this new restaurant will almost certainly become the subject of intense scrutiny, not least from the secretive savants working for the little red book!
Situated between Stratford-upon-Avon and Cheltenham with their festivals and cultural attractions, and just six miles from the relentlessly popular village of Broadway, with all the other famous Cotswolds villages and points of interest just a short drive away, there’s an abundance of opportunities for days out and about. And while first-time visitors to the area will understandably want to embrace it all, the seductive, soporific, do-nothing spell that Dumbleton seems to cast over its visitors is maybe not one to resist too strongly.
This is wonderful walking country with footpaths well marked, and, personally, I couldn’t think of a better way to while away the afternoon, readying for whatever culinary delights Dean and his colleagues might have lying in wait. My walk skirted around the cricket pitch where the village girls’ team were engrossed in winning their match, up into the woods and around hills that opened out onto mesmerising views far across Gloucestershire.
After an impromptu lunch of particularly plump blackberries with only the ever-present sheep and pheasants scurrying about in the undergrowth for company, I stood transfixed as half a dozen red kites silhouetted against great puffs of white cloud circled slowly on the thermals above me. The other Cotswolds – without the A-list celebrities and Chinese selfie sticks. It’s still out there.
Dumbleton Hall boasts an illustrious list of distinguished visitors including Charles Dickens, the Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charles Darwin, while throughout the inter-war period, socialites like regular visitors, the Mitford sisters, propelled the Hall into its country house party heyday. Now looking resplendent in the wake of its meticulous restyling, and not least thanks to the POFR, without whose interventions this majestic property would have been lost forever, the party, continues on.
@dumbletonhall | dumbletonhall.co.uk
Dumbleton Hall Hotel, Dumbleton, Evesham, Worcestershire, WR11 7TS
