Step off the train at Castle Cary station and The Newt is just an eight-minute taxi ride away – or off the A359 if you’re driving. This sprawling West Country estate offers a uniquely bucolic retreat that combines the fineries of a luxury spa hotel with a working farm, complete with deer park, Roman villa, gardening museum and cydery.
Day visitors are welcome – the best way is a Great Garden Escape package – but to make the most of what’s available at this 360ha property you either need to be a Newt member (more below) or to stay. Ensure at least two nights to fully experience all that’s on offer.
One of the stately garden view rooms at Hadspen House. Credit: The Newt in Somerset
Stylish and stately or elegantly informal
The Newt has two accommodation venues on site. The Grade II-listed Hadspen House – built in 1687 and then remodelled as a Georgian manor – has 13 stately rooms as well as a further 10 within the converted Stable Yard, which includes the romantic Granary hideaway. Cream tea is served daily for hotel residents in the Library.
A stone’s throw away is the gym, yoga studio, croquet and badminton lawns, as well as the tranquil spa which features an indoor-outdoor pool with views onto the medieval herb garden, a hydrotherapy pool, steam room, sauna and salt-therapy chamber, along with a comprehensive menu of treatments.
Hop on one of the free golf buggies or cycles, or take a leisurely 20-minute stroll south of Hadspen, past the lake, goose pond, cyder orchards and Four Seasons Garden, and you’ll arrive at the Farmyard. This renovated 18th-century dairy farm is the more informal side to The Newt, but no less elegant. Choose between 17 rooms with roll-top baths, four-poster beds and minibars packed with complimentary Newt goodies.
It also has its own heated pool house, and a daily afternoon tea for guests is laid out in the cosy Garner Bar, well-stocked with (free) Newt cyders and spirits for guests to serve themselves and enjoy inside by the fireplace or outside, watching the antics of the free-range chickens.
The beautifully renovated Farmyard is The Newt’s more informal side. Credit: The Newt in Somerset
Farm-to-fork dining
There are three restaurants across both sites for guests to indulge in, all of which focus on ingredients grown, foraged and reared on the 800ha farm, and prepared in its butchery, bakery and creamery. Along with an extensive range of products made at the on-site cydery, the wine lists showcase The Newt’s sister estates of Babylonstoren in Franschhoek and Vignamaggio in Chianti.
The Farmyard Kitchen, with its wood-fired range, specialises in sharing-style dining; the more formal Botanical Rooms, at Hadspen House, serves modern, seasonal dishes; and the Garden Café – overlooking the Parabola, planted to 330 heritage apple varieties – has an exceptional vegetable-led menu.
The café is only available to Newt members (options start from £40/year), but joining is well worth it for unlimited visits throughout a 12-month period to explore the gardens, woodland and exhibitions. It also includes access to partner gardens, free tours, workshops and festivals, and exclusive spa day and online shop offers. Membership is included as part of any B&B stay of two nights or more.
The kitchen gardens leading up to Hadspen House. Credit: The Newt in Somerset
Garden-lover’s paradise
Owned by the Hobhouse family for more than 230 years, Hadspen House and its walled gardens were transformed by Nori and Sandra Pope before the estate was sold in 2013 to South African hotelier couple Karen Roos and Koos Bekker. Following extensive renovations, they opened the house and surrounding estate as The Newt in 2019 (named after the great-crested newt, a protected UK species they have built habitats for) and then launched the Farmyard in 2021. Further expansion is planned.
Some 300 gardeners look after The Newt’s vast seasonal and kitchen gardens – more than 350 varieties of fruits, vegetables and herbs are grown – as well as the 26ha orchard planted to 70 varieties of apple. The cyder tour and tasting is a must, and guests can take courses in everything from bowl-turning, basketry and butchery.
But it’s the gardens and their numerous free attractions that are the big draw. Join horticultural walks, find the wyvern in the grotto, feed the red and fallow deer in the deer park, pop into the Beezantium to better understand our avian friends, or take the treetop walkway to visit the interactive museum The Story of Gardening,
Fresh produce, from farm to fork. Credit: The Newt in Somerset
Romans and railways
The must-visit attraction – alone worth the Newt membership for repeat visits – is Villa Ventorum, the extensive and ambitious reimagining of a Roman-British settlement. Ruins dating from 351AD were discovered in 1834 and then fully excavated and reconstructed by the current owners. The impressive attention to detail extends from the interactive visitor centre through to the virtual-reality headsets that guide you through each room of the villa, immersing you in the lives of both masters and servants.
Before you board the train to return home, pop in to The Creamery. The old Castle Cary cheese factory, built next to the station in 1912, has been fully renovated by The Newt’s owners into a café, farm shop and working creamery, beautifully finished in an industrial Edwardian-style with historic Great Western Railway touches everywhere.
If you didn’t stock up at the farm shop at The Newt itself, grab some of its packaged goodies and fresh produce, including cheese and yoghurts made onsite using milk from its herd of water buffalo.
Rates are based on two-night stays mid week and three-night stays between Thursdays and Sundays, starting from £530/night to £1,830/night over Christmas and New Year. Breakfast, daily cream tea, in-room larder and bar, on-site experiences as well as a 12-month Newt membership are included. thenewtinsomerset.com
