Arthur Cole 0:00

Socome back to the Newt Podcast with me, Arthur Cole. Join us for a walk through the estate with our invited guests to the backdrop of the Somerset landscape and its wildlife residence. This week we take our grand tour of the Newt's main hotel, Hadspon House. Join me as we walk through this historic building, talking to staff and uncovering some hidden gems. Let's jump straight in. Well here we are. We've just walked in through the portico and we're about to enter Hudson House. Come with me.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Welcome to Hudsman House.

Arthur Cole 1:18

Hudson House begins in 1687 when London lawyer William Player started building here on the Somerset Hillside. What began as a farmhouse became a gentleman's country house with stables, barns, a private brew house, cattle stalls, and even a piped water supply. Frightfully smart for the age. The bones of the house we see today are more than 300 years old. So we're into what is the lobby, but it's unlike most hotel lobbies. It feels very much more like a house. There are beautiful old maps on the wall of the West Country, there's Somersetshire, there's a large fireplace set with a marble mantelpiece around it, and there is a large picture of Hadspon, as would have been found in, as the date says, 1801. So this is really the Georgian mansion in the Palladian style. The picture shows sheep and lambs and cattle in the foreground with a lot of trees and woodlands surrounding it. And on the approach to the house are carriages drawn by horses. I guess this is the way that people would have arrived to Hadspon back in the 18th and early 19th century. We've turned up in the rolls. Hadspon didn't become the house we recognise all at once. During the 18th century, its older 17th century character was gradually transformed. Sash windows, classical proportions, and later alterations gave the house the Georgian face it presents today. By 1785, it was ready for its next chapter. And a family who would remain here for more than two centuries. So walking across the white marbled floor, we're heading towards the staircase, a mahogany staircase, and we're gonna head up to see our garden view room. Come with me. Staircase is not vast and grand. Newly clipped as we are recording this in September. The light is splashing down across the whole of the garden, the formal garden, the eye is drawn through the large sash windows, down across the lawns, down to the vegetable garden in the distance. It is certainly a bucolic scene of old England. And in the room itself, what dominates is this four-poster bed with its dark wood four posters and beautiful pressed Egyptian cotton sheets with a luxurious little sofa set at the end, a full-size mirror, which must be about eight feet tall. On the small side table, there are estate apples freshly picked from the orchards, a selection of good literature, everything from Winnie the Pooh to the Gardener's Essential with Gertrude Jekyll, and a welcome note from our team signed by our hotel manager. Let's move through to the bathroom. The bathroom, well, the bath sits in the centre, looking out next to the sash windows, looking straight east. What a view to sit back and have a bubble bath with a glass of champagne in your hand. It's well appointed, there's an old fireplace, and marble all around. So imagine reclining back in this bath, bubbles all around, bubbles in a glass, looking out across the rolling lawns as they draw your eye down past the ponds, to the kitchen garden in the middle distance, and back up to what we call the deer park in the far distance with a mixture of mature trees. The sense of space and roominess in this bathroom is luxuriant. And it's one of our founders' ideas, Karen Ruiz, who says, We don't like to change the dimensions of the rooms. We will work with what we have. Many other hoteliers will come into an old building and they will reform the rooms inside, knock walls down, open up others. Not Karen. Karen believes in working with what you have, making the spaces sing and tell that story. Well, this is precisely what's happened here at Hadspon. We have the bathrooms as they are, large. In fact, some would say, why are the bathrooms so large? Karen believes in having large bathrooms because we believe that you should be spending most of your time, if you're upstairs, getting ready for being downstairs. The bedroom should be used for only two things, sleeping and well, you know the other. We walked into this room in September in 2026, but there's something that feels timeless about it. You can imagine the aristocracy of England coming here for early autumn, shown up to the rooms, four poster beds, fires stoked, looking out across the landscape. It's a quintessentially English scene that has lasted for hundreds of years. When you come here, it feels you've stepped into that. This is Georgian England. In 1785, Bristol lawyer Henry Hobhouse bought Hadzman. The estate ran to 717 acres, with a house described as having six rooms on each floor, marble chimney pieces, and stabling for 20 horses. Hobhouse immediately began improving it. Ceilings were raised, reception rooms remodelled, and the house re-roofed in Welsh slate. Hadspon had become a Georgian country house. Let's call the lift and head down for lunch. It reminds you of something out of a an Art Deco detective series, something like Poirot. Let's press ground floor. Ah. Right, time for lunch. Let's head to the botanical rooms. First thing that strikes you as you walk into the botanical rooms is the kitchen laid open and bare for all to see. You walk past the kitchen with the smells, the sights, the sounds, the colours of the vegetables that have come in from the market garden, all of the steam rising. This is your introduction to the restaurant. It's the food laid bare. Understand this is where it all comes from. And on what we call the chef's table is a large piece of marble, and on that we've got seven plates showcasing what's coming in from the gardens. Some weird and wonderful things. It's September, so we've got sweet corn from the garden. There are grapes from Ellie's garden, which is the small stable yard garden, just on the outside of the botanical rooms. We've got the tomatoes from our glass house. We grow the tomatoes and harvest from March until December in the Hydroponics house over at the farm. We've got a new addition, which is the prickly pears. These we are also growing under cover here. We've got Eureka lemons from South Africa and some very curious-looking beetroots. Most amazing forms there. And then patty pan squashes. Yellows, greens, buttery, delicious, and very attractive to look at. Okay, let's head on through to the main restaurant where I believe we're gonna get met by our restaurant manager. Darren!

SPEAKER_03 11:40

Arthur, hi, how are you?

Arthur Cole 11:41

Very good. Welcome back. Oh thank you very much. So ton of grooms. And it's lunchtime. Coming in, we're feeling very hungry. We've come to the right place, Arthur.

SPEAKER_03 11:55

Yes, so we've got a bit of a mix of the new and the old here. So you've got the Victorian wing extension, which you've turned into the oak room. So it's got the original fireplace, and then in contrast, you've got our glass room, so it's like a glass roof on top of um like a Mediterranean-filled courtyard. Oh, it does feel like Yeah, so in the in the evenings we've got uh lanterns or on Shebbertooks, and it's all very magical, and you can see the stars, and you've got your traditional dining space in the oak room with the big open fire and your top table. And the big difference here, I think, is that across the estate during the day, all the all the guests go out and they go and explore the estates, but when they come back in the evenings, it fills up and it just gives you this big roaring kind of I don't know, party almost. It's it's atmosphere. So it's all it's like a real enjoyable place to be and to enjoy our great great projects from the estates.

Arthur Cole 12:42

Well, it doesn't feel stuffy at all. However, I mean this is still the service. Your staff are dressed in beautiful livery. There's there's Sophie over there dressed in her uh waistcoat.

SPEAKER_03 12:54

Well, the psalms that we have here, so it's on for lunch today. Um when you say Soms, what is a psalm? Well, there's some million that we have. So we've got uh there's Max who's had a beverage, and you've got Maisie, and you've got Sophie, and so like your evening service, you have this sort of extra tier of service. They come and talk to you at the table, and you have some of the fine wines from the extensive cellar. Have you been down to the cellar? Oh, we're we're gonna have to go down and check that out after this. Yeah, some amazing wines down there from all over the world. And then we've got you know Lele's here in the evenings, our Matri D, you've got a host team, you've got a lot of like your experienced chef terang waiters who are looking after you in the evening. Um, I'm about some times, you know, might bring the food to the table and say hello. And then obviously, yeah, working with Tony and the team. And every day we've got produce coming across from the estates. So we've got stuff coming from Ellie's garden that I think you've seen on the way in there, uh, and then obviously just the everything from the the farms and from the the big huge polytunnels that we have. So, yeah, it's all it's all brought together and brought straight to the table.

Arthur Cole 13:50

So, are you shipping your ingredients in from around the world? And no, not at all.

SPEAKER_03 13:56

No, no. So a lot of it is is straight from the estate. So um in fact, this this week the venison's coming on, uh which is fresh from the estate as well. Uh we've got our our lamb, our doorstet downs, some sirloin on our uh farms fork menu. So yeah, it's good. Come on in. Uh I'll bring up the top table by the fire.

Arthur Cole 14:18

Wow. Alright. So we're faced with the long table. You could fit, how many could you fit on this table? I well, ten at the absolute most. Ten at the most. But it looks set up for six as it is. Yeah. Comfortable six, yes, with comfortable low armchairs for sitting down to, and a fire blazing in the far end of it. This feels so cozy as we're moving into autumn and winter.

SPEAKER_03 14:47

Yeah, yeah, and as the nights draw in, it's a lovely, lovely space to be uh with the roaring fire, the little lanterns on the table. So yeah, it's quite a unique space. And then during the day and the evening, put little um garnishes on the table. So today we've got um some bubble and store and blood oranges that you pop them into your water, let them infuse. And then throughout the summer we've been taking flowers from the garden, edible petals, that kind of thing, sort of make sort of adding colour to the room. So we do that throughout the year as well. So that these little touches just bring in the telling the story about what we do here. So Darren, really looking forward to lunch. What do you suggest? Well, today we've got our farms fork menu that we run every day. What we have today, we've got the uh the British white beef croquettes with some chive aioli, uh, and then grated on top is what we call Yarlton Slight, which is like a Monchego, it's made from the creamery, and that's just grated on top. It's got some little cornflowers in there as well, so it looks fantastic. Uh, and then the British white beef cut today, sirloin, carrot hummus, carrots coming from the estate as well, and then some salsa verde that we've made actually from the produce from um from the garden next door Ellie's Garden. Um and it comes with a glass of cider.

Arthur Cole 15:51

Oh, is that where you prepare this one? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:53

So today we're doing the Kingston Black. Oh so uh yeah, one of the club specials that we're making out of the cellar.

Arthur Cole 15:59

Oh, so you've got a cider club as well.

SPEAKER_03 16:01

We do, yeah, yeah. The restaurant here we've teamed up with the cider team to showcase their ciders that they produce kind of on the side. So you can buy them from the um the cellar door, so to speak, at the cider press, or you have them for lunch in here.

Arthur Cole 16:12

Well, it sounds like a wonderful place to come and explore and experience those pairings, not just with wine, but with cider.

SPEAKER_03 16:19

Yeah, fantastic. It's all part of uh your day out at the New, of course. If you're here at the New, you have to try cider.

Arthur Cole 16:26

Well, it's Somerset, right?

SPEAKER_03 16:27

Yes, of course, yeah. Darren, thank you. Hope you enjoy your meal. See you soon.

Arthur Cole 16:31

Thank you, Darren. The smells that are coming out from the kitchen, which has its really has its pass open to the restaurant, the smells are just too enticing. I can't hold myself back. Let's go s let's go and meet the chef. Wow, I mean the smell of this. What we've got here is we've got a large tin of something that looks uncuous and chocolate and quite naughty with a white decoration being put on. What are you piping through here?

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Um, so it's just a dark chocolate tray bake for our cream tea. It's got a white chocolate top and a dark chocolate ganache. Yeah.

Arthur Cole 17:19

Okay, well, I think we're gonna have to come down for tea as well later on. Let's head through and go see the chef. We're into this vast looking kitchen. There's a huge range with two wheels on it. It looks like something from a Victorian industrial era. And here's Josh. Hey Josh. Hello. Well, I mean, you've got that is one large pan with what looks like flintstone-sized pieces of meat. What are you doing here?

SPEAKER_01 17:50

So I'm basically making a lamb sauce. So roast the bones, let it go slow all day about four or twelve hours, and then let it roast overnight, and then just reduce it down the next morning, straighten off all the bones, add wine, onions, and make it flavorful, nice. And then at the end you get this nice uh reduced uh lamb jus, and it's so flavorful. Specifically for the lamb dish. So whenever we have a lamb rack, saddle, whatever the estate gives us, we'll basically use that uh source with the protein, and then that will just finish the protein off. Yeah. So basically, zero waste it, yeah.

Arthur Cole 18:30

Love the zero wasted. And Josh, tell us a little bit about you. Um that's not a Somerset accent that's going through.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

No, that's not. So I'm actually from South Africa, from Cape Town. I've been here for almost three years now. Started as a um senior CDP, work my way up now. So Junior Sussef now. Um yeah, under the lead of Tony. Um new changes happened and I mean a lot of positivity now recently. Um looking forward to the year that's coming and also the new, everything that the new has to offer for not just me but the rest of the BR team.

Arthur Cole 19:05

What would you say you're most looking forward to with regards to food for this autumn?

SPEAKER_01 19:10

Well, basically, you know, now we're going into Christmas season, so we've got all this festive bits coming up, all this new um um how can I say spices and apples, cinnamon, and all those kind of bits and bobs, and then rhubarb from the farm, and you know, all these nice um uh estate bits as well. So we get to use with we get to use all this nice uh produce from the estate. I mean going into a new year, also we have venison coming into season now as well. Uh with that meaning we have the venison zoo made from that as well. So again, zero wasted Tony the Hitchhef Wolding Work, uh, new menu. Well, it's basically uh posted new menu. It will go live soon, say in about a month's time or soon. So a lot of new things happening, yeah. Fresh produce, I mean Kaim, what can go wrong?

Arthur Cole 19:59

Yeah, okay. Well, I think we're gonna be having to come back to the botanical rims quite a few times. Thank you, Josh. A slightly overindulgent lunch there. I'm still thinking back to that British white and the flavour combinations just divine. This is a great excuse to go to the bar and have a DJ Steve. Let's head through to the bar. So we've walked in to Hadsman Bar. There's the large sash windows, darker colours in here. Who likes a bright bar? And here is Tom, who's gonna be making us a DJ Steve after our large meal. Tom, what are you making us to have us ease back into life on the wing here at Hadsburn?

SPEAKER_02 20:56

So I'm gonna make a side car for you today. So it's some little bit of lemon juice, some orange liqueur, uh, shaking, so sugar around the rim. Nice.

Arthur Cole 21:27

Up after a long, languorous lunch. Cheers.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Enjoy something.

Arthur Cole 21:42

So we're now walking just out of the bar and heading towards what would be the back of the house. We have deep blue, blue lyus flagstones, the bright yellow honey coloured stone of Hadspon, and we're about to walk down into To the vaulted cellars. Just before we do, above the arch that sits above the steps going down is a glass cabinet on a piece of stone sticking out from the wall, and within that glass cabinet is a silver trophy. This is the Newt's Croquet Club Championship Trophy. We've been running a croquet club championship here at Hadspun for the last five years. We have a summer match and a winter match. And those that win the championship, they get a free stay at the hotel at a time of their choice. But perhaps even more enticing than that is to have their name on the trophy. The Newt in Somerset Croquet Club Champion of that year. The highly coveted prize. As we walk down these blue lyre steps into the vaulted cellars, the smell of cellar comes at us and it smells ancient. There is also in the steps the remnants of old sea creatures from anywhere between 205 to 180 million years ago. This is the age of this stone that comes from about seven miles away that we use for the flagstones and for the steppes, with these circular and semicircular fossils of what could have been once an early ancestor of a scallop shell. Look closely at Hudson House. Touch the stone with your hand, and you are feeling the geology that comes from beneath our feet. The house is built of carey stone. To the geologist, that's an inferior oolite. A 160 million year old limestone. It's warm and honey coloured, and it's quarried here across the road at the quarry called Hadspon. On the south front, it was worked into finely cut ashlar, blocks fitted so closely that the walls almost read as a single surface. Local stone, local craftsmanship, and a building quite literally made from its landscape. The light level has dimmed, and we're now into a brick-lined, vaulted cellar. For those of you who remember our episode with Gaz Oakley, this is where we brought him down to, and the first sight that hits you after this brick-lined cavity is our array of different colourful preserves and pickles. We get gluts throughout the year of all sorts of different vegetables and fruits. And when we can't use them fresh, rather than having them rot and go wasted on us, we like to preserve them. Here I'll pick up what looks like orange peel in sugar and water. These oranges would have come through from Bobble and Sturin during harvest time for them. Also, some other very intriguing looking things here. Guavas, again from South Africa, when they send them over to us. The great thing about guavas is that they look slightly like veiny testicles. And what is quite good fun to play with the guests here is to say not everything in the pickles and preserves in the vaulted cellar is vegetarian. Some things come from the livestock, the male livestock. Anyone who keeps livestock knows what you have to do with the majority of the males. You have to chop something off. And people come in, they see these, and they think, wow, prairie oysters. In the main part of the vaulted cellars, there are corridors that come off. Let's go down one of these corridors. The walls get quite narrow, the ceiling comes down. It certainly feels almost dungeon-like down here. Ah, and down at the end is a locked gate. Well, it's locked for good reason, because beyond this gate, we can see an array, an absolute wealth of different wines. We've got everything here from French to New Worlds, and of course our own from Bob and Sturin. Wine is another really important part of your experience here at the Newt. We can see everything from even Swiss and Austrian to Spain, of course, French, and all the New World wines as well. Our estate in Italy, in Tuscany, Vigna Maggio, we have some excellent wines there. These you can all try here. We have magnums of our Vignomaggios, but also our bubbling storums. I can see a Nebuchadnezzar wine now. That's one of our top red wines from South Africa. That would be rather fun to open up. Moving into another part of the Vaulted Cellars. These just continue to open up. And in front of me is a large, beautiful table made from one of the trees here on the estate. And it has about a dozen chairs on either side of it. It is set up for our honey tasting. That's right. Not just wine tasting goes on here, because wine tasting does, but we do honey tasting as well. We have a trained honey sommelier. Think about all of the training that goes in for a wine sommelier. Well, this is very similar to a honey sommelier. Our honey sommelier has been to Paris, which is where you go to learn from the best. And all of those different factors that go into the tastes of wine, well, some of them are quite similar to the honey. Think about honeys from around the world. Think about all of the different plants that the bees visit, the tawa of those areas. This can all be found in different honeys. And with a guide, you can learn to tell your different honeys apart and where they come in the world and when the different plants were being harvested by those bees. So we look away now from the honey sommelier area and we turn our attention down into the well, and it is stone-lined with Hadspon stone. Now the well is the most important bit about the house. You can't build a house until you have a reliable source of water. However, the man that built this house and commissioned this well first, William Plair, came from London, and no self-respecting Londoner drank water, certainly not in the late 17th century. If you did, it would probably kill you. Most people that drank from wells or standing water supplies would die. They didn't understand germ theory then, but they just knew that you would end up in a pretty sticky state on the floor. We now know that a lot of standing water back then could harbour diseases such as typhoid and cholera and E. coli. So once you have the well, what you then do is you build a small private brewery on site, which is what William Plair, the first man who owned Hadspan, did. He created a small brew house where he would make small beer. Small beer is like the alcohol-free beer that has risen in popularity of late, and it had a low alcohol level, but crucially the fermentation process and the brewing process meant that it killed off any nasty diseases that would have been in the water. So now you would drink small beer, morning, noon, and night, to hydrate yourself, and you would get into your cellars to drink French wine to facilitate the conversation. Being in Somerset, you would probably have quite a few farm workers. And in the 17th century, farm workers tended to be paid in cider. Again, this was a low alcohol cider, so you would be paid in quite a lot of it. I believe the volume used to be approximately eight litres per man per day. That's a lot of cider to get through. Drink responsibly. Drink eight litres of cider. Alright, let's head out of the cellars and head back towards the light. The front of Hadspan House tells you how important the rooms behind it are. The grander ground floor rooms have larger twelve-pane sash windows. Upstairs, the windows become smaller and simpler. In the centre, Doric columns frame the entrance beneath a classical pediment. It's Georgian hierarchy written in stone. And since 1961, Hadspon House has been protected as a Grade 2 star-listed building. The house is built in four periods. The late 17th century for the original, then the Georgian period, the Victorian period, and the Edwardian period. Let's go through to the Edwardian East Wing. Follow me. Well it's bright and it's airy. It looks to the east, same as the garden view room upstairs that we've been in, and it's of classical proportions. We've got rat-an furniture that gives it a contemporary feel. And really, this room is about enjoyment and pleasure. This is where you take your morning coffee as the sun comes in, and then when the sun's on the other side of the house in the evening, what a place to have champagne and a bit of a boogie. Let's put a record on. It has that sense of looking forward, the belly pock period. Think about flappers, think about champagne cocktails, think about cigars and dinner jackets. And this room would have been a great place to entertain guests of note. Certainly the hobhouses did. In fact, in 1940, his Majesty King George the Sixth arrived and quite possibly in this room was challenged by the youngest daughter of the house, a little Hermione Hobhouse, who flatly refused curtsy to the monarch. But you can't be a king if you don't wear a crown. At the time when this part of the house was commissioned, we were probably in between wars. There was always the threat of more unrest coming from Europe. And instead of falling down a rabbit hole of despair and uncertainty, they'd raise a glass, pick up their feet, have a dance, get dressed for dinner, and live a life. Who knows what's gonna happen tomorrow? Might be sent off to the front. But tonight, in Hadspon, we're gonna get on it. The Hobhouse family had owned Hadspon since 1785. In 2013, almost 230 years later, the estate was sold to Kursbecker and Karan Ruse. It was the end of one extraordinarily long chapter. And just the beginning of another. What followed wasn't simply a hotel conversion. Hadspon House was carefully restored and adapted by Simon Morrie Jones architects, preserving the character of the historic rooms while giving the building a completely new life. In 2019, the hotel opened as the Newt in Somerset. More than three centuries after William Player began building here, Hadspon was a place of hospitality once again. Ah well, we're now in the drawing room. Think of it as a south facing, the light spilling through the big bay windows, and we're looking south down the South Avenue. We've got large, ample, generous sofas and armchairs. There are portraits of old hobhouses benignly smiling down on us. There's Henry Hobhouse the second, the first Hobhouse to get here in 1785. Then his son, Henry Hobhouse the Third. Chess boards, solitaire boards. It's a feeling of luxury, relaxation, and allowing the time to gently pass. This is a great place to have afternoon tea. And in fact, let's move through to the adjoining room, the library, where they're just setting up for it. So we're in the library where they're setting up for tea, and at the far end of the wall, we've got a vast bookcase behind glass doors in their first editions towering up in front of us. It is said that if you remove the correct first editions in the correct order, that it opens up a secret panel behind the bookcases, which leads you to a secret passageway that gets you to any bedroom in the house. But I'm yet to learn what that sequence is. Cheers. See you next time.