Ninety feet, walled, and never bookable
The garden
The whole reason this building works. Ninety feet of walled garden behind a house on a street with buses on it, which is why the four rooms at the back are the quietest rooms we have and why breakfast in June happens outdoors.
What is actually out there
A brick terrace off the breakfast room with six tables on it, a lawn about the size of two parked cars, box hedges that were here before we were, one mature maple, a raised bed of kitchen herbs that breakfast actually uses, and a shed at the far end with an ashtray beside it because that is the one place anybody may smoke.
From October there is a steel fire bowl lit most evenings when it is dry, with blankets on the chairs. It goes out at ten, which is the neighbours' rule rather than ours — this is a residential block and the gardens on either side belong to people who live in them.
What it is not
It is not a bar and there is no service out there: whatever you want, you carry out yourself from the parlour. It is not private — it is overlooked on both sides and from the back, which is why we do not do ceremonies in it. And it is not reserved for events while guests are staying. If you have booked a room, the garden is yours; a gathering in the Garden Room does not take it away from you.
The garden is never closed to guests for a private booking. A gathering may spill onto the terrace, but the lawn, the fire and the chairs stay open to anybody staying here. A property that sells you a garden and then hires it out from under you has sold you something twice.
Out there, in four pictures
What a photograph of a room does not show. Every photograph on this site was generated rather than taken, because the building it shows does not exist. What a photograph cannot show about a room is set out in full on its own page.
Fifteen rooms · breakfast included · no lift
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