The Newt in Somerset

The Newt in Somerset centres on Hadspen House, a honey-coloured limestone house of the 17th century, remodelled in Georgian times, which was home to the Hobhouse family for more than two centuries. Its gardens were shaped by Margaret Hobhouse in the Victorian era, by Penelope Hobhouse in the 1970s and by Nori and Sandra Pope in the 1980s; the present design is by the Italo-French architect Patrice Taravella. At its heart is the Parabola, a walled garden of more than 600 apple trees in 330 varieties, a National Collection. The house opened as a hotel in 2019, with 30 acres of formal gardens inside a working estate of woodland, farmland and cyder orchards. There is a museum over a Roman villa dating to AD 351, a full-scale reconstruction called Villa Ventorum and the Beezantium, a giant beehive in the woods. Rooms are divided between the house, its Stable Yard and the Farmyard, a former dairy farm half a mile away, where seven rooms have their own steam pods. The Botanical Rooms serves estate-reared beef, lamb and venison with vegetables from the market garden, and the spa has an indoor-outdoor pool, a hammam and a medieval herb garden.