Lime Wood – the New Forest house that swapped tweed for trattoria

Lime Wood sits back from Beaulieu Road on the fringe of Lyndhurst, a many-gabled stone house that the MICHELIN Guide now ranks with Two Keys among Britain's quieter luxury addresses. The building began life as Parkhill House, a property known as Parkhill House at that time, before hotelier Robin Hutson agreed to take it on on behalf of its billionaire owner Jim Ratcliffe, founder of chemicals company Ineos, reopening it to widespread critical acclaim in November 2009. The 33 bedrooms now spread through the Main House, Coach House, Pavilions and Crescent. In the kitchen, chef Angela Hartnett and Lime Wood's Luke Holder pull together both of their much-admired signature styles to create Hartnett Holder & Co, the hotel's relaxed and stylish Italian restaurant, while Herb House Spa burrows into the forest edge beyond. Just an hour and a half from London and 20 minutes from the coast, it trades the starch of the traditional country house for something looser, ambitious without raising its voice.

01The house

The site predates Lime Wood by well over a century, and it is still recognisable as an impressive light stone mansion in the heart of the New Forest, with the restaurant and public rooms looking out over the gardens. According to the hotel's own account, the 33-bedroom house was five years in the making, a collaboration between architects Charles Morris and Ben Pentreath, who handled the structure, and a succession of interior designers: David Collins first, followed more recently by Martin Brudnizki, Rob Angell and Susie Atkinson.

That layering of designers shows. Where Collins gave the main rooms their first, more formal polish, Brudnizki's later pass loosened things up: a makeover that turned the hotel's swanky dining room into a casual English look, with a panelled dark-oak bar, flattering lighting, Brit art and secluded corner sofas. The result is a house that reads as lived-in rather than styled, the kind of place where a reception room can hold both a chesterfield and a surfboard without anything looking out of place.

02Rooms and suites

Rooms are grouped by size rather than view: Eaves, Cosy, Spacious and Generous, spread across the Main House, the Coach House, the Crescent and the Pavilions. The entry-level Eaves rooms overlook the lawns and forest beyond, with fitted bathtubs and double basins, while the Main House's Generous rooms go further still, with roll-top baths that look out onto the forest and beyond. For more space, the Forest Hideaway Suites are designed over two floors, with a downstairs lounge, small dining area and a fireplace.

Insider tip

Dinner at Hartnett Holder & Co runs 6-9pm nightly; book ahead for the Mud House spa ritual.

Beyond the house itself sit Lodges, Cottages and Cabins scattered through the grounds, including a Lake Cabin on the far side of the water, plus a newly opened addition called Forest House, built for larger gatherings just beyond the trees.

03Where to eat

Hartnett Holder & Co is the hotel's main table, run jointly by Angela Hartnett and Luke Holder, whose cooking draws on the much-loved Italian approach to eating, where sharing and provenance is everything. The kitchen leans on the forest itself: the pair plunder their British and Italian heritage, forage for fungi in neighbouring woods and cure it in the onsite Smokehouse. Past menus have run to mackerel, English muffin and oyster, pork belly with rabbit, chorizo, clams and cannellini, and whole brill baked with fennel and preserved lemon salad, served in a room where aristocratic eccentricity meets trattoria bric-a-brac, including an espresso machine, oak bar and a Tracey Emin on the wall, with velvet corner sofas for sharing plates. A Mediterranean note runs through the detailing too, with a marble countertop bar and red leather stools.

In October 2026 the restaurant was serving a Pranzetto set lunch, two courses from £39.50 or three from £45, alongside its full à la carte; lunch runs from noon to 2pm (2.30pm on Sundays) and dinner from 6pm to 9pm every night. Afternoon tea is served daily from 2pm to 4pm, and in the Herb House Spa, Raw & Cured offers a lighter, juice-and-salad counterpoint for guests moving between treatments and the pool.

04The bar

Hartnett Holder & Co's bar is as much a destination as the dining room: a glass-roofed bar where you can start with a cocktail from an extensive list before a central bar position that allows views across the elegant, comfortable dining rooms. The architectural flourish is overhead: an ingenious retractable glass roof over the atrium bar, flooding the inner courtyard with natural light, open to the sky on fine days and closed in a moment when the New Forest weather turns. Beyond it, the separate Courtyard Bar keeps a grazing menu running until 9.30pm for anyone who wants a late plate rather than a full dinner.

05Spa and wellbeing

Herb House Spa is built over three levels into the edge of the forest, with a sauna and indoor hydro pool facing the trees, a Mud House for self-applied natural clay rituals, a steaming outdoor hot pool, eight single treatment rooms and two larger double rooms. A 16-metre ozone-treated lap pool opens through glass doors onto the garden in warmer months, and a rooftop gym with Technogym equipment steps straight out onto a herb-scented Roof Garden used for yoga and fitness classes.

The spa's product partnerships are part of its identity: it was the first spa to offer Bamford body and skincare treatments outside the brand's original wellness spa at Daylesford in Gloucestershire, and it is the first UK spa to work with Sae Seaweed, a Dorset business that hand-harvests seaweed from Studland Bay for its treatments and bathing rituals. Seasonal wellness workshops, from contrast therapy to foraging walks led by the hotel's resident forager, run alongside the regular treatment and fitness programme.

06The neighbourhood

Lime Wood stands within the New Forest National Park, just 1.5 miles from the village of Lyndhurst, around a 90-minute drive from London, with the nearest train station at Brockenhurst, five miles away. The surrounding country is working forest rather than manicured parkland, grazed by New Forest ponies and crossed by ancient droveways. Nearby points of reference include the New Forest Golf Club, New Forest Museum, Rufus Stone and the Bolderwood Deer Sanctuary, all within a short drive, with the Solent coast a further twenty minutes beyond.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.