At Fowlescombe Farm in Devon, luxury is rooted in a deep understanding of place. Building a hotel into a working farm with a 500-year history, Creative Director Paul Eldwin Glade has allowed the landscape, local materials and the people who know it best to shape the experience – from estate-sourced stone and farm-grown wool to a regenerative approach that connects hospitality with agriculture.
Paul Eldwin Glade: The starting point was absolutely the farm, and how it already worked. Fowlescombe has been farmed for around 500 years, so the idea wasn’t to impose a hotel onto it, but to understand what was already here and work out what we could preserve, bring forward or carefully add. I think you have to look at a place properly before you decide what it should become. I spent a lot of time simply getting to know Fowlescombe, the buildings, landscape, light, weather, materials, people and the way the farm actually works.
If the farm is working regeneratively, the hotel should follow the same principle. Anything we add should strengthen rather than draw down from what is already here. The farm gives the hotel its purpose, and the hotel supports the farm in return. I wanted the design to make Fowlescombe more fully itself rather than turn it into something else.
A great solo travel tip spotted this week on Hotel Designs.
