Gravetye Manor

Gravetye matters to garden history. William Robinson, the Irish writer who argued against Victorian bedding schemes in favour of naturalistic planting, bought the Elizabethan manor in 1884 and spent nearly fifty years making the case in soil. The flower garden, the oval walled kitchen garden and the wild woodland plantings are still worked to his principles, and guests are free to wander all of them.

The hotel has seventeen rooms and suites, panelled and comfortable rather than fashionable, and a glass-walled dining room added in recent years that seems to hang out over the garden. The kitchen holds a Michelin star and takes a great deal from the walled garden — the vegetable beds are genuinely the source rather than a photo opportunity.

The estate covers around a thousand acres of the High Weald, with woodland walks and lakes below the house. Wakehurst, Sheffield Park, Standen and the Bluebell Railway are all close, and Gatwick is fifteen minutes away, which makes this an unusually civilised first or last night in England.