Deal, United Kingdom

Updown Farmhouse

Price per night from$199.89

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (GBP158.33), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Tasteful top-to-toe

Setting

Kentish decorum

Up, down, left, right: spy Updown Farmhouse from any angle and your gaze is sure to fall on something charming, witty or downright delicious. Owners Ruth and Oli (who also plays head chef) have imbued every nook with warmth and personality, such as playful Studio Lenca artworks, misshapen totem lamps and suede sofas so chunky you’ll have no choice but to kick off your shoes. Across the lawn, a crumbly former stable has been repurposed as the terrace restaurant, where Oli has been causing a stir with his inventive country cooking. So, Deal? Done, as far as we’re concerned.

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

A seasonal cocktail each

Facilities

Photos Updown Farmhouse facilities

Need to know

Rooms

Four, plus two cottages out in the grounds.

Check–Out

11am, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 3pm.

Prices

Double rooms from £190.00, including tax at 20 per cent.

More details

Rates include Continental breakfast, with gluten-free and vegan options too.

Also

A permaculture plot and several additional cottages are planned for the grounds in the coming months.

Please note

The hotel is planning to map out the gardens by March and are bringing in wellies and bikes to borrow so you can go exploring.

At the hotel

Free-to-borrow wellies, hand-drawn maps of the gardens and local area, library, honesty bar, fireplace, free WiFi. In rooms: Roberts Bluetooth radio, tea- and coffee-making kit, Noble Isle bath products.

Our favourite rooms

None of the farmhouse’s four guest rooms nor the gardener’s cottage are a dud here. Ruth’s contact at Soho House came in handy when she was selecting the phenomenally comfortable beds, and the artworks – very much a family affair – have been mostly curated by Oli’s mum and brother. Their eye for bold pieces throughout is a reassuring one. For instance, Margate-based, El Salvador-born Jose Campos, aka Studio Lenca, does justice to both those places with his child-like portraits. Clever uses of texture, in place of framed paintings, are also a welcome addition. Overall, the Gardener’s Cottage is your best bet for complete privacy, and Room 1 is the most spacious. Word of warning about the bathrooms, though – the tubs are very high so climbing in and out may be an issue for those with mobility issues.

Packing tips

Deal is famous for its tales of smugglers, who could hide easily among its narrow streets and pub cellars, and its nearby caves and towering chalk stacks. But fight the temptation to smuggle some of the artworks at Updown Farmhouse, and bring some spare change to spend in the galleries along Deal high street.

Also

The restaurant, the gardener’s cottage and downstairs spaces in the farmhouse are accessible, but the four guest rooms are all upstairs, making them unsuitable for wheelchair users.

Pet‐friendly

Updown welcomes dogs, in the house and the restaurant, with a one-off cleaning fee of £50 to cover the whole stay. There’s no charge for assistance dogs. See more pet-friendly hotels in Deal.

Children

Family holidays are straightforward at Updown, with baby cots and foldaway beds for under-12s, changing mats, gentle bath products and a welcoming restaurant with highchairs, plus green spaces for setting them free and tuckering them out.

Food and Drink

Photos Updown Farmhouse food and drink

Top Table

Out in the garden during the warmer months; and during winter, a window table for two in the terrace restaurant that looks across the lawn towards the house.

Dress Code

You may want an extra layer for the terrace restaurant in winter. Otherwise, thick cotton and understated knitted threads will be in keeping with your textured surroundings.

Hotel restaurant

The idea for Updown grew organically from a supper club hosted at the farmhouse by acclaimed UK chefs such as Rowley Leigh and Anna Tobias. Word got round, and soon owner Oli was responding to umpteen lunch and dinner requests. Not bad with a ladle and a pinch of salt himself, it made sense to open the farmhouse doors to the wider public, and with that, local and national renown has followed. And we’ll throw our hat into that ring, too, particularly for the simplicity of its scaled-down menu (just three choices per course, except on Sunday when a roast is added). To let you know they’re serious, Oli has built a huge baker’s oven into the stable wall, and his Kentish-with-an-Italian-twist menu features the likes of fried pumpkin and fonduta; sea bass and scallops with agretti, winter tomatoes and basil; and pork chops with turnip tops, cannellini beans and anchovy butter. Leave room for the apple tart with calvados and salted caramel ice-cream.

Hotel bar

The very capable staff will mix you a drink to have anywhere, but if you’re thirsty and want to get started yourself, the honesty bar in the dark and broody snug is stocked with locally made gins, other well-curated spirits and tastefully chosen mixers.

Last orders

Dinner is from 6.30pm to 9pm.The honesty bar never closes.

Room service

Drinks and an edit of the dining menu can be ordered in-room from 10am to 9.30pm.

Location

Photos Updown Farmhouse location
Address
Updown Farmhouse
Updown Road
Betteshanger
CT14 OEF
United Kingdom

Updown Farmhouse is a countryside retreat 10 minutes inland by car from Deal on the picturesque Kent coast.

Planes

London Gatwick Airport is an hour’s drive away, Stansted is an hour and 40 minutes, and Heathrow is just over two hours’ away by car.

Trains

Direct trains to Deal leave London from St Pancras International railway station and take a couple of hours. From there, it’s a 10-minute taxi journey to Updown Farmhouse.

Automobiles

The M20 from London takes you all the way to nearby Folkestone by car in under two hours. From there, it’s about 30 minutes to the hotel. There’s free parking on the grounds at the farmhouse.

Worth getting out of bed for

Don’t leave Updown Farmhouse for the day without strolling the perimeter and taking in the gorgeous red-brick farmhouse from every angle, as well as admiring its soon-to-be-added permaculture plot, kitchen garden, barns and cottages. After that, Deal is well worth extensive exploration. Its quaint high street has an impressive ratio of independent boutiques: Mileage (Thurs-Sun), Fleming’s (Mon-Fri) and La Petite Brocante (Mon-Sat) are all worth a rummage, as are the exotic homewares at Hoxton Store (Wed-Sat), a new venture by Alison Whalley, formerly of the East End’s Hoxton Boutique. Talking of homeware, Will & Yates (Wed-Sun) is ostensibly an art gallery but also stocks a nicely curated selection of rugs, throws, wicker baskets and other delightful pieces. For statement threads, atelier Mrs Lang (Fri and Sat) always has an eye-catching window display and rail-fulls of embroidered wonders within.

After an afternoon’s browsing (and inevitable buying), you might want to head up the coast to Ramsgate or nearby Broadstairs, home to Botany Bay, a stretch of sand bounded by Kent’s white cliffs and photogenic chalk stacks. If you’ve never been, now’s a good chance to fit in a visit to Canterbury Cathedral, around 20 minutes’ drive from Deal.

Local restaurants

From the already-quaint High Street, pass through Deal’s even quainter back streets to the seafront, where the town’s hardy pier pokes out into the Channel. At its tip is Deal Pier Kitchen, where you’ll be served fine brunches and, on Friday and Saturday evenings, steak and lobster. Excellently stocked deli and bistro No Name has, in fact, made a name for itself serving hyperlocal cheese, meat and seafood platters as well as a thoughtful selection of French wine.

Local cafés

Popup Cafe, as the name implies, was a temporary venture that has now become a Deal institution since its opening in 2012: here be some of the town’s best coffee, croissants and sourdough sarnies. 

Reviews

Photos Updown Farmhouse reviews
Eva Wiseman

Anonymous review

By Eva Wiseman, On-the-go writer

Drive 15 minutes from Kentish coastal town Deal, down a country road, then along a muddy track, and suddenly, on your right, you’ll spy twinkling lights, and secluded countryside stay Updown Farmhouse will appear from the darkness of the woodlands like a vision from a happy dream. The hotel was one of those rare successful lockdown projects, where its clever owners opened a restaurant with rooms in a Grade-II-listed building set over seven-and-a-half acres of rambling gardens. Arriving in the evening, we felt like we were being welcomed into someone’s perfectly arranged home – the house was warm and welcoming, with its colourful lounge, honesty bar, board games, books, and covetable art; and upstairs were the equally inviting bedrooms (with more set in two cottages in the grounds). The house’s older façade (all handsome redbrick) is hidden from the road, facing the grounds, which you reach through a porch lined with borrowable wellies; a manicured garden is scattered with sunloungers, and a little further afield a heated barn houses the kitchen and restaurant.

On that subject… It’s the food that draws guests and hungry locals to dine in this forest near the sea. Chef Oli Brown (who owns the hotel with his partner Ruth Leigh) previously founded Duck Duck Goose in South London, and his seasonal Italian-inspired menus here are similarly divine. The kitchen has a baker’s oven built into a wall of the former stables, and vegetables are gathered from the on-site kitchen garden. The team regularly organise special nights here too, where Britain’s favourite chefs join them in the kitchen – when we were staying, a truffle-themed menu (which it would be unfair to tempt you with as it’ll have come and gone by the time this is published) by chef Tim Siadatan (of Trullo and Padella fame) was upcoming. The restaurant has an array of potted tomato plants, and the corrugated-plastic roof is wound through with vines; rain gently pitter patters on it, making a cosy soundtrack to the meal. We were here on steak night, which offered a deceptively casual set menu, cooked to perfection.

In autumn 2023 Updown Farmhouse launched a new hideaway – the Gate House, a self-contained two-bedroom cottage, up by the kitchen garden beside the main house. It’s quietly opulent, with two bedrooms (a master with a king-size bed, and a little room with bunk-beds for small children) beside a living room with views across the gardens. The calm interiors are shot through with bold paintings by Salvadoran artist José Campos, the founder of Margate’s Studio Lenca. Us Smiths sat for a brief but glorious while on the house’s plump patterned sofa the next day, eating homemade biscuits and reading the perfectly chosen books that were waiting for each of us, from fairytales to Katy Hessel’s The Story of Art Without Men. Everywhere, gentle touches from the owners made us feel cared for – the staff and service were warm and quietly accommodating in the very best of ways.

After a grand breakfast (of scrambled eggs and salmon which had been smoked on site) we drove through the woods to the sea. Deal is a place that has embraced the gentrification, artistic community and unique boutiques you can find in other coastal towns like Brighton, but manages to remain just rough enough around the edges that you’re not blinded by, say, the gleam of polished mid-century furniture or aroma of botanical scented candles. We intended to walk along the cliffs from Dover to Deal, but ended up strolling along the pebbly beach instead, eating at Deal Pier Kitchen, a glass-walled restaurant at the end of the Brutalist structure, then making several ice-cream stops everywhere else. Margate is a short drive away up the coast, and we ended up there as night fell. We’d planned to settle in at  Sargasso (a small-plates eatery and wine bar run by the team behind acclaimed East London restaurant Brawn), but instead – with hyperactive kids in tow – we settled for fish and chips on the beach. 

On returning to Updown after a day spent bustling through the towns of the Kent Riviera, we were hit again by the effortless glamour of the place. Surrounded by trees, it feels as though the whole property is hidden, a grand, walled secret garden. This is one of those rare places where you can dip into the fantasy of a rural retreat, while feeling luxuriously looked after by staff who balance professionalism with a cosy friendliness. I can’t wait to go back.

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Price per night from $199.89