Woolley Grange

There are family hotels, and then there are family hotels, and within minutes of arriving at Woolley Grange, where — beyond the quiet of a wooded lane one calm father is talking a toddler down from a tantrum, and a table of milk and cookies ('One cookie per child please!') sits adjacent to the reception desk — it is clear that this is very much the latter. It’s clear that this is a place where — despite the lack of clowns or soft play and surplus of wood-panelled luxury — young children are not just accommodated but treated like kings.  

It was dinnertime when we dropped off our bags — our kids' names were written on blackboards to show us our table, their mini menus were presented and mini meals promptly brought, the waiter addressing them directly and with kindness. His effusive theatrics may have been a sign of care and attention, or he may have been doing a bit, but we decided to assume he was the best waiter in the world. We were surrounded by families in similar states of loving desperation — over there, a mother of two young boys had come away for the weekend with her parents while her husband was away for work, and they took it in turns to coo over their grandsons and chastise them for throwing food. Behind us sat another single parent with three older children, as elegant and athletic as their dog beneath the table, and to the right were a young couple attempting to introduce their baby to the concept of pesto. 

For more than a hundred years, Woolley Grange was under the ownership of the Baskerville family (as immortalised in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles), before, in the Second World War, being turned into an antenatal centre for mothers fleeing London during the Blitz. Since then, the current owners say, they’ve been visited by plenty of 'Woolley Babies' who have stayed at the hotel to reconnect with their birthplace. The pond beyond the restaurant, with its tulips and lily pads, gives way to a large field containing an adventure playground, and a grand swing tied by ropes to a tree. Near the kitchen, through a brick archway, is the fairy garden, where fairies (plus elves, goblins, etc) apparently live alongside a sleeping rabbit in his hutch. 

We were staying just beyond the main house — in our room, we walk through the bathroom from the main bedroom to find what feels like a secret den, bunkbeds, biscuits, the whole delight. Down the path in a birch-coloured barn is the kids' club (all guests are offered a complimentary two-hour stint per night's stay) and the teachers there also host activities like gardening and cookery, or in the evening a session where everybody toasts marshmallows over a fire pit. We of course forgot to partake in any activities at all, distracted as we were by the swimming pool (complete with outdoor Jacuzzi), sauna and steam room. The kids did, however, catch an evening screening of Ratatouille in the cinema room, where popcorn is provided and parents mosey in and out with their clinking drinks.

A short drive from Bradford-on-Avon to Frome the next day required a visit to the bar behind Rye Bakery, where Owen’s Sausages and Hams makes what are widely acknowledged to be the best hot dogs in the world. The wind and sunshine propelled us through Frome’s craft market and mediaeval streets, where a ‘kindness festival’ was wrapping up. The next day, another short drive took us to Bath and a fabulous pasta restaurant called Solina, where we ordered slightly too much but of course ate it all. If we’d had more time, or been more disciplined about leaving the excruciatingly comfortable bedroom (where, in addition to Nespresso coffee, there were butterscotch truffles, and regularly replenished biscuits, and all mod cons, which these days means ‘Netflix on the telly’), we would have also gone to the Cheddar Gorge and perhaps Wookey Hole, a place I’ve been meaning to go to all my life, largely because of its name.

A luxury family hotel is a complicated proposal — the things a parent dreams of often clash quite violently with the dreams of a child, especially when what a parent requires from their holiday is ‘a weekend quite alone’. But Woolley Grange has done its utmost to accommodate everybody’s desires, whether the finger-painting three-year-old, awkward teenager, harried mother or new parents. Mid-week, I can imagine those without children could holiday romantically here entirely oblivious to the fact that, like Cinderella’s pumpkin, at the stroke of Friday, this sophisticated Jacobean manor house becomes a well-catered playground, the cocktails turning into juice, the tulips into fairies.