Tucked into the South Devon countryside, Fowlescombe Farm isn't a hotel bolted onto farmland — it's a farm that grew into one. The property sits on land that's been worked for around 500 years, and the team behind its conversion approached it less as a building project and more as an act of careful listening. In a recent conversation with Hotel Designs, creative director Paul Eldwin Glade explained how the place shaped every decision.
Glade, who grew up in Switzerland and came to the British country house tradition as an outsider, started by simply spending time on the farm — studying the buildings, the light, the weather and the people who knew the land best. Rather than restoring the site to one idealised historic moment, he treated the hotel's contemporary additions as just another chapter in a building that's been altered constantly for centuries. New stonework is slightly recessed so guests can read what's old and what's new.
The material story is unusually direct. Stone was quarried on the estate, and wool and sheepskin in the rooms come from the farm's own Manx Loaghtan sheep. Local stonemasons, gardeners and craftspeople contributed their knowledge alongside their labour. Rooms, converted from barns and agricultural buildings, deliberately keep some of their original quirks — low doorways, odd proportions, unexpected light — so no two are alike, each with its own name and character.
Glade's guiding question was how he wanted guests to feel, and his answer was 'regenerated'. That means deep beds, limewashed walls, oak and cool stone, but it also means the muddy stuff: guests are encouraged to meet the animals, walk the land in the rain and get properly dirty before returning to serious comfort. The house raincoat — a big, dark-green, British-made coat issued to guests and staff — has become something of a design manifesto in itself. Rather than designing around Devon's weather, the hotel designed for it.
The farm describes itself as regenerative rather than merely sustainable, borrowing the agricultural principle that your presence should leave a place better, not just less harmed. That thinking runs through soil, food, gardens and the guest experience alike, and the team openly frames it as a work in progress rather than a finished green credential.
For travellers, this is a genuinely different take on the countryside escape. If you've grown tired of twee country-house formulas — tartan, antlers and 'rustic chic' — Fowlescombe offers something quieter and more grounded: luxury measured by comfort and proportion rather than decoration, in a place where the hotel and the farm genuinely depend on each other. It suits walkers, food lovers and anyone curious about where their dinner actually comes from. And if you leave thinking differently about composting or wool, that's rather the point.
Story via Hotel Designs.
