The Place
Our series editor Fiona Duncan visited soon after it opened in summer 2026, without hesitation ranking it among her favourite mid-price country house hotels – up there with The Abbey, Penzance (sadly long closed) and Penally Abbey, near Tenby.
Fiona especially liked its natural fit with the setting: the serenely unspoiled village of Teffont Evias in the Nadder Valley, south Wiltshire, with stone houses dating from the 1600s or earlier and a clear chalk stream running beside the single village street – note the cloud-pruned hedging.
Teffont House was once owned by artist and gardener Henry Howard, and now it has been sensitively updated with every necessary comfort. A new garden room is the setting for the restaurant with its distinctly nostalgic flavour (marmite crumpets for tea) and a gong heralding pre-dinner drinks. Among a list of imaginative features (see Facilities) there’s a summer house for stargazing and a walled croquet pitch.
Inside, there’s the all-important homely feeling – your room, with its chalky colour scheme and gleaming shower room, could almost be a spare room in a private house. Just ten bedrooms in the main house and a further seven in adjacent buildings mean it doesn’t feel like anything but a small hotel, though the atmosphere is lively.
We have long respected the hospitality talent of the owners, Dan Brod, Charlie Luxton and Matt Greenlees, who combine humour, sophistication and intelligent management with hard work. They ensure enough well-trained staff to give friendly, unintrusive, fast service and they offer great value. They can’t bear cutting to the bone: in fact, one of the key attractions of their Beckford Group (The Beckford Arms, The Lord Poulett Arms, The Bath Arms at Longleat, The Talbot Inn, The Bradley Hare, Corsham House, and their two restaurants in Bath: Beckford Bottle Shop and Beckford Canteen) is the way its properties deliver more than you’d expect for an already fair price. An increasingly hard act.