Estelle Manor is a chic take on the hotel and country club

Set in a Grade II-listed landmark house on a 60-acre estate, surrounded by more than 3,000 acres of rolling parkland, Estelle Manor is a heady mix of elegant, contemporary art-filled spaces and old-school values. 

With parasols a-plenty lining terraces to rival any Riviera hotspot – even in the rain – this is the latest grand old English estate to be transformed for a new era of high-society hospitality. The new hotel and country club has been a long time in the making, and no detail has been left unconsidered.  

Inside Estelle Manor

Having acquired the property – previously Eynsham Hall – in 2018, Sharan Pasricha, the founder of Ennismore (responsible for The Hoxton hotels and the recently revamped Gleneagles, among others), has held a far-reaching vision for it. 

Seeing its potential as a scaled-up country outpost of its sister establishment, the impossibly chic and discreet Maison Estelle members’ club in Mayfair, Pasricha has created a rural escape and luxury lifestyle destination, with 108 rooms and suites, four restaurants, and a soon-to-open multi-level spa. 

Under the artistic direction of Sharan’s wife, investor Eiesha Bharti Pasricha, three different designers have been responsible for the various spaces in the manor so far, including Roman and Williams (largely the labyrinthine manor house itself, including the reception hall, library, living room and bedrooms), Olivia Weström (the Scandi-style Clubhouse) and small boutique agency AIME Studios (some of the yet-to-be-seen private houses). 

As with so many English stately homes, Eynsham Hall has had many lives before this: it’s been a hotel and it’s been a police training college, and before that a Second World War maternity hospital. As Estelle Manor, it welcomed its first guests in May 2023, but its evolution is still very much in progress.

Recently opened restaurant The Glasshouse sits in the estate’s walled garden. It complements The Brasserie, an all-day dining space; and the opulent, malachite-lined marvel that is The Billiards Room, a traditional Chinese restaurant. 

At The Glass House, guests are treated to a menu focused on heritage fruit and veg, most of which has been grown less than 5m from your table, and cooked on a wood fire right in front of you. The magic is in the details. From the patterned planting of lettuces around the greenhouse setting to the fairytale scale of the pumpkins, and the moreishness of the smores… it has all been designed to delight. 

The major unveiling still on the horizon is the Eynsham Baths, a Roman-inspired 3,000 sq m spa set to open in autumn 2023. Currently under construction to the west side of the manor house, deep in the ancient woodland, the Eynsham Baths promise sculpted columns and carved marble details around an enormous tepidarium bathing hall. 

There will be five pools, a lounge and multiple treatment rooms, including couples’ suites and thermal cabins. Intriguingly, the intention is not simply to create a serene space to relax and unwind, but a social scene that will enliven souls well into the night, with secret swimming areas and a cascading waterfall surrounded by natural wildflowers and woodland ferns.

Guests cruise their way around in chauffeur-driven golf carts, on bikes or, for the under-tens or so, in tiny Land Rovers. Everything is done properly here – not because it’s always strictly necessary, but purely for the joy of it.Just like the London club, the unofficial tagline at the manor is that this is a place for those ‘who have plenty to say and nothing to prove’. In this no-expense-spared layer cake of textures, flavours and ambiances, this clearly also works as a design ethos.  

estellemanor.com