Estelle Manor

Eynsham Hall stands in parkland north of Witney, a Jacobean-style house of honey-coloured stone with gables, tall chimneys and a long drive through the trees. James Francis Mason, heir to a fortune made in Portuguese copper mines, had it rebuilt in 1908 to designs by Sir Ernest George, the architect of the Claridge's of 1898. The Masons sold after the Second World War, and for decades the house served as a police training college and then a conference hotel. In May 2023 it reopened as Estelle Manor, a members' club with bedrooms, created by Sharan Pasricha's Ennismore group as the country sister of Maison Estelle in Mayfair.

History

The estate at Eynsham was bought in the nineteenth century by the Mason family, whose money came from the Mason & Barry mining company and its copper mine at São Domingos in southern Portugal. The present house replaced an earlier one on the same site; George's design draws on the Jacobean manors of the Cotswolds, and the interiors were fitted out with panelled rooms, a great hall and a billiard room. After the war the house passed out of family hands. The police college years left little mark on the fabric, and the conference-hotel years added bedrooms in the grounds. Ennismore, which also owns Gleneagles and The Hoxton, took on the estate and began a two-year transformation in 2021.

Architecture and design

The house keeps its Edwardian plan of hall, drawing rooms, library and dining room, with panelling, plaster ceilings and stone fireplaces restored. Roman and Williams, the New York studio of Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch, designed the interiors, layering the rooms with deep colours, velvet, antiques and a great deal of art, in the club manner that the same team brought to Maison Estelle. Beyond the house, the walled garden, the stable block and a set of new buildings in the park hold the restaurants, the children's club and the baths.

Rooms and suites

Bedrooms are spread between the main house and the grounds: rooms in the hall itself with the original proportions, rooms in the former stables, and a set of lodges and cottages in the park. The count is a little over a hundred. Interiors follow the house style, with four-poster beds, freestanding baths and a mix of antiques and commissioned pieces. Hotel guests may book without membership; members have the run of the club rooms.

Dining

The Brasserie in the house is the main dining room, open through the day. The Glasshouse in the walled garden serves a lighter menu among the planting. A further restaurant occupies the former billiard room. There are several bars, a cafe by the pool and a shop selling the kitchen's produce.

Wellness

The Eynsham Baths opened in 2024 in a new building beside the house: a Roman-inspired bathhouse of marble and stone with hot and cold pools, steam rooms, saunas and a long heated outdoor pool, together with treatment rooms and a gym. The park adds tennis and padel courts, riding and running routes through the woods.

Weddings and events

Estelle Manor holds weddings and private celebrations, with the great hall, the drawing rooms and marquees on the lawns as settings, and the whole estate available for exclusive use. Corporate meetings and off-sites use the house's reception rooms and the private dining rooms; there is no purpose-built conference hall.

Location

The estate lies between Witney and Woodstock, about 12 miles north-west of Oxford, in the countryside where the Cotswolds begin. Blenheim Palace is fifteen minutes by car, Soho Farmhouse about half an hour, Oxford station 25 minutes. London is an hour and a half by road, or an hour by train to Oxford and a taxi from there. Heathrow is about an hour and a quarter. For a luxury hotel near Oxford it has an unusual amount of land around it, with 3,000 acres of park and farmland beyond the gardens.