The Estate

Four hundred acres,
and the weather

Nothing here is scheduled unless you ask for it to be. Five things we do properly, a valley that does the rest, and a boot room by the back stairs with everything you need in it.

The Ffrwd Valley

Three hundred acres of oak, four paths, none of them signposted.

The cellar, racked to the ceiling with vintages

The Cellar Dining Room

Seven courses, twenty covers, one long table of Welsh oak. Rhian Morgan cooks whatever the estate and the coast have given her that morning: sewin, salt-marsh lamb, whatever the hedgerow is doing.

Dinner is at eight, once, and everybody eats together. There is no menu to choose from because there is no choice to make: seven courses arrive, they are the same seven for everyone, and they were decided somewhere between the kitchen garden and the fish merchant at about nine that morning.

Rhian Morgan has cooked here since 2020 and held three rosettes since 2022. She trained in Copenhagen and then unlearned most of it, which she says was the useful part.

Dietary requirements are not a problem, they are just information: tell us when you book and the seven courses become seven different courses. What we cannot do is a substitution decided at the table.

Seven courses
Twenty covers
Dinner at eight

The wood-fired sauna at the treeline, stove lit and the door open

The Bathhouse & Cold Spring

A slate plunge pool cut into the old dairy, a wood-fired sauna up at the treeline, and a spring below the ash trees that has never once been warm.

The dairy stopped being a dairy in 1961 and spent fifty years as somewhere to keep a tractor. It is now a slate plunge pool, three deep baths and a room with nothing in it but a bench and a window.

The sauna is wood-fired and sits up at the treeline, twenty minutes on foot from the house. It is lit at three every afternoon and it is yours if nobody else has asked for it, which is most days.

The spring below the ash trees runs at about eight degrees in August and rather less in February. There is a rope, a slate step and no supervision whatsoever.

Slate plunge pool
Wood-fired sauna
Two therapists, by arrangement

The Ffrwd running slow between the oaks in autumn light

Field & River

Fly-fishing the Ffrwd with Tom, who has kept this river for nineteen years. Or three hundred acres of oak wood, a borrowed pair of boots and no particular route through it.

Tom has kept the Ffrwd since 2007 and can tell you, to the week, when the fish will be where. Two rods a day, no more, and he will lend you everything including the confidence.

The oak wood runs to three hundred acres and has four paths through it, none of them signposted. There is a map in the hall porch that is deliberately not very good.

Boots, waterproofs and a flask are in the boot room by the back stairs. Nobody will ask where you are going and nobody will come looking, so tell somebody anyway.

Two rods a day
Three hundred acres
Boots provided

The Library Bar

Eleven hundred books, a fire lit at four, and a bar built almost entirely from Welsh spirits: Cadarn, Glyn Aur, and a gin distilled two valleys over by a man we know.

The books came with the house and have been catalogued exactly once, badly, in 1974. There is a card index in the drawer of the writing desk and it is wrong about roughly a third of them.

The fire is lit at four whatever the month. In August this is faintly ridiculous and we do it anyway, because the room is north-facing and the stone never really warms up.

The bar is almost entirely Welsh. Two whiskies, four gins, a vermouth made in a shed near the coast, and one bottle of Islay malt kept for a guest who asks for it by name.

Eleven hundred books
Fire lit at four
Welsh spirits

Foxwell and its gardens seen from directly above

The House, Entirely

Take Foxwell whole: seventeen rooms, both dining rooms, the staff, the cars, the valley and the weather it brings. Eleven weekends a year, and they go early.

Eleven weekends a year the house goes out whole. Seventeen rooms, both dining rooms, the bathhouse, the boot room, the cars and everyone who works here.

It suits a wedding of about forty, a significant birthday, or a company that has decided its away-day should be somewhere with no mobile signal. It does not suit a hundred people.

The eleven weekends are released each January and are usually gone by March. There is a waiting list and it moves, because plans change.

Eleven weekends a year
Up to forty guests
Released each January

The boot room

Everything you forgot to bring

Boots to size twelve, waterproofs, a shelf of walking sticks that came with the house, flasks, and a drying cupboard that will have your things ready by dinner. There is a map on the wall that is deliberately not very good, because the point of the wood is to be slightly lost in it.

Boots and waterproofs
Drying cupboard
A deliberately poor map

Take it whole

Eleven weekends a year

Seventeen rooms, both dining rooms, the bathhouse, the cars and everyone who works here. It suits a wedding of about forty, a significant birthday, or a company that has decided its away-day should be somewhere with no mobile signal.

Enquire about the house

Foxwell from the lawn under low autumn cloud

Released each January, and usually gone by March.