Maestros from the world of food and wine are coming together at the recently launched rural retreat, Keythorpe Hall.
Fall 2021 saw the launch of the newly revived country house, Keythorpe Hall, in rural Leicestershire. With testing measures for fully vaccinated travelers arriving in the UK removed as of 11 February, the Grade II listed Georgian country house is looking forward to welcoming its first U.S. guests for spring and summer getaways.
For the owners, Giles Godfrey and Barbara van Teeffelen, what started as the renovation of this house and its gardens as a private weekend home gradually evolved from the time renovations began in 2017 to become a masterfully curated exclusive-use retreat that introduces guests to the historic house and meandering 20-acre estate.
“It started with the garden,” says Barbara. “We’d come up from London every weekend to take on a project. We started clearing a part of the garden, finding the original floors of the glass houses, and then growing our own vegetables until the point we couldn’t eat all of it ourselves so started thinking about establishing a proper outlet for it. Then we went to Ballymaloe (the hotel and restaurant with cookery school in Co. Cork, Ireland) where we really learnt about vegetable growing, sustainability and all of that. Their philosophy is just incredible and we came back with so many ideas. We started selling vegetables to Ollie Dabbous at Hide in London, then we started selling more locally and that’s when a florist called Nicki Pierce asked us to grow her flowers, after which we began contacting local florists.”
“With all this space planted up, we started delivering vegetable boxes around the local area when restaurants closed during lockdown, which was great because we became a part of this local foodie community,” she continues. “It gave us a bit of a local following and it was great for our head gardener Claudio because he just joined us at the start of 2020 and that enabled him to keep planting. We then began thinking about how we could use the produce ourselves and we’d already been talking about having some chefs come to cook up here. In the end, we decided to have a chef based here so they could work with the garden. It’s important for us to have that link between the kitchen and grounds. This is also when we realised we wanted to take the house back to what it was built for – entertaining.”
The hospitality concept evolved from here, with the owners taking inspiration from hotels they’ve stayed in and culinary concepts they’ve discovered on their own travels but remaining true to the character of the property. The house now has four gardeners and two full-time in-house chefs, among other house staff. True to the recent evolution of this site, the guest experience revolves around the house’s plant-to-plate culinary offering and activities that connect you to the house, gardens and local area along with the overall food and drink philosophy.
Chefs Peter Johansen and Bent Varming are behind the property’s gastronomic offering. Both bringing extensive culinary experience to the kitchen, Johansen draws on time spent at The Harwood Arms in London, Maaemo in Oslo, Brae in Australia and Relæ and Bæst in Copenhagen, while Varming takes cues from his past roles at St John in Farringdon and Lyle’s in Shoreditch among other restaurants in the UK and Copenhagen. Each meal created by these accomplished chefs is designed according to what local produce is at its very best from the estate’s walled garden as well as artisan producers and local farms.
Complementing this culinary concept, the house has also teamed up with the award-winning sommelier and author of ‘Which Wine When’ Bert Blaize who was previously with La Belle Epoque in Manchester and Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, before taking the reins at the Clove Club in Shoreditch, East London, then becoming head of bars and restaurants at Birch Community in Hertfordshire. At Keythorpe Hall, Blaize is on hand to create personalised wine and drinks experiences.
Outside, Keythorpe Hall’s head gardener Claudio Bincoletto draws on his extensive experience as a trained ethnobotanist to cultivate the sprawling gardens and forage for wild ingredients such as mushrooms, while also increasing the gardens’ biodiversity. The avid gardener leads tours of the grounds while talking passionately about the wildlife, plants and history of the land.
The house itself was built, starting in 1783 and reaching completion in 1843, by Henry William Wilson, 11th Lord Berners. A reception hall with fireplaces, a dining room, family kitchen and double drawing room, with floor to ceiling windows providing views over the countryside, span the ground floor. Stairs then lead down to the original wine cellar and up to the seven individually designed suites.
Different periods of the property’s history can be seen throughout the design, which comprises replicated mouldings, modern tapestries and the artwork and textile design of local artists, alongside original architectural details. After finding an original patch of wallpaper in one of the rooms, the owners drew on those colors and that pattern for elements of the carefully curated interiors and after finding a stained-glass panel in cellar they made it a feature upstairs.
Activities on the estate range from cooking, gardening and flower arranging to wine tasting and gin making. Exploration of the local area, including visits to local distillers and brewers, can be arranged as a part of the bespoke stay. While this restored house and its surrounding land is a destination in itself, the property also introduces guests to a lesser visited pocket of the English countryside.
“This part of the country is relatively unknown but with the same type of scenery as the Cotswolds,” says Barbara. “It’s stunning landscape but it doesn’t have as much tourism and is more accessible to London. Plus, if you’re doing London and Scotland, we’re part way between the two.”
Ideal for groups of friends and multi-generational family trips, Keythorpe Hall is available to rent, with prices starting from £6,000 per night, for groups of up to 14 people in the main house, with an additional three-bedroom apartment also available and packages tailored to include meals, drinks and service.
