Sandy Lane

In January 1961, Ronald Tree, an Anglo-American former Member of Parliament, opened a hotel on a crescent of sand in the parish of St James, on the west coast of Barbados. He had bought the land, a former sugar estate, in the 1950s and asked the architect Robertson Ward to build in the Palladian manner with local coral stone. The result was Sandy Lane, a house that drew British aristocrats, film actors and the owners of the neighbouring plantations for three decades.

History

Tree sold the hotel in the late 1960s and it passed through the hands of Trust Houses Forte. In 1996 three Irish businessmen, Dermot Desmond, J. P. McManus and John Magnier, bought the property. Rather than refurbish it, they closed the hotel in 1998, took down the original buildings and rebuilt them in the same coral-stone Palladian idiom, on a far larger scale. Sandy Lane reopened in March 2001. In October 2004 Tiger Woods married Elin Nordegren on the estate, a wedding that put the hotel on front pages around the world.

Architecture and design

The rebuilt hotel keeps the formal plan of the 1961 house: a central block with arcaded loggias, columns and balustrades in pale coral stone, opening on to terraced gardens that fall towards the beach. Mahogany trees shade the grounds. The scale is larger than it looks from the sand, because the public rooms, the spa and the golf clubhouse sit back from the shore.

Rooms and suites

There are 112 rooms and suites, all with sea views or garden views and large private terraces. A separate five-bedroom villa with its own pool stands on the estate for families and private parties. Each room comes with a butler service and a marble bathroom.

Dining

L'Acajou, named after the mahogany that surrounds it, is the main restaurant and serves dinner on a terrace above the beach. Bajan Blue, by the pool, handles breakfast, lunch and a more relaxed dinner, with a Sunday brunch that has become a west-coast institution. Afternoon tea is served in the lobby bar overlooking the sea.

Wellness

The spa covers about 47,000 square feet, which makes it one of the largest in the Caribbean. It is built around a courtyard with a hydrotherapy pool and treatment suites, some with their own garden. There is a gym, a hair salon and a tennis centre on the estate.

Three courses belong to the estate. The Old Nine dates from the original hotel. The Country Club, an 18-hole course, opened with the rebuilt hotel in 2001. The Green Monkey, designed by Tom Fazio and opened in 2004, is laid out through a disused limestone quarry and is reserved for hotel guests and members.

Weddings and events

Sandy Lane hosts weddings on the beach, in the gardens and on the terraces of the main house, and the 2004 Woods wedding is still the most famous of them. Private dinners can be arranged in the restaurants and the golf clubhouse. The hotel takes meetings and incentive groups, though it is a resort first and a conference venue second.

Location

The hotel stands on the Caribbean side of Barbados, between Holetown and Paynes Bay, about 25 minutes by car from Grantley Adams International Airport at Christ Church and 15 minutes from Bridgetown. The west coast here is calm enough for swimming all year, and the hotel's water-sports centre runs sailing, water-skiing and snorkelling from the beach. For a luxury hotel in Barbados, Sandy Lane is unusual in owning so much land inland: the golf courses and the spa give it the feel of an estate rather than a beach hotel.