The Newt, in Somerset, has unveiled Yarlington Lodge, a private-use country house with Jane Austen–inspired bedrooms, a village pub on the doorstep, and the run of one of Britain’s great estates

By Issy von Simson

The Newt, in Somerset, is arguably one of Britain’s most ambitious hospitality projects. The Hadspen estate, three miles from Bruton, has been a Somerset landmark for three centuries. When South Africans Karen Roos and Koos Bekker bought it in 2013, they embarked on a multi-million-dollar transformation of the Georgian house into a sumptuous hotel and spa. The grounds encompass meticulously tended formal gardens, orchards planted with 70 different varieties of apple, a Roman villa, an apiary, a deer park, a grotto, and a museum tracing the history of gardening from biblical Eden to the present. Down the road, a READ ON