{"id":329533,"date":"2026-08-25T20:16:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T20:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/329533\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T20:16:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T20:16:18","slug":"the-whimsical-british-country-house-fantasy-is-taking-over-upstate-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/329533\/","title":{"rendered":"The Whimsical British Country-House Fantasy Is Taking Over Upstate New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cBritain is a country of great eccentrics,\u201d muses interior designer<\/a> Adam Greco<\/a>, whose own view of \u2018British whimsy\u2019 manifests in charming chintz and heirloom curios, filtered through the lens of cultural treasures like Sherlock Holmes and Mary Poppins. It’s a highly romanticized spin, something the New York City\u2013based designer, who’s worked on properties like London’s The Ned<\/a> and Oslo’s Sommerro<\/a>, felt wanting in the hospitality space, even across many landmark British hotels. \u201cAs a foreigner I remember walking into a grand hotel on London\u2019s Regent\u2019s Street<\/a> and thinking it looked like a function room in Cincinnati inside,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was disappointing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recently, though, a wave of UK properties have started to embrace the kinds of cultural eccentricities that Greco saw as lacking in those hotels. This updated approach to the whimsical British aesthetic, all vintage bric-a-brac set alongside some serious art collections and sumptuous fabrics, is best expressed in the UK at properties like the Three Horseshoes in Batcombe<\/a>, about 20 miles south of Bath, and the Fort Road Hotel in Margate<\/a> along the southeast coast.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

At The Three Horseshoes, sketches of bird eggs are among the artwork in rooms<\/p>\n

The Three Horseshoes Batcombe\"Image<\/p>\n

The Somerset pub-with-rooms favors locally sourced ingredients<\/p>\n

The Three Horseshoes Batcombe<\/p>\n

Lately, the design aesthetic has captured America\u2019s attention, and found a home in upstate New York: Soho Farmhouse<\/a> is due to open its outpost in Rhinebeck<\/a>, New York, next year. The team behind the Cotswolds\u2019 Estelle Manor<\/a> is said to be searching for a property in a similar patch close to the Hudson Valley and the Catskills. These new builds are a bid to lure affluent New Yorkers who have outgrown the Hamptons, and, as former magazine editor turned hotelier Dorian Greenspan puts it, \u201cprovide something wilder, that feels genuinely rural rather than relocated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Maison<\/p>\n

Maison Monna’s kitchenware is a collection to be envied<\/p>\n

William Jess Laird<\/p>\n

Greenspan\u2019s own property, Maison Monna, is only 40 minutes from the city in Old Chatham, a charming hamlet he discovered when vacationing in the area with his partner. With Monna, he wanted to speak to this new breed of luxury traveler, someone who wants to feel \u201ccomfortable, cared-for, but not smothered,\u201d\u2014a natural companion to British whimsy’s lived-in, been-here-for-decades sensibility.<\/p>\n

Maison Monna<\/a> was a perfect canvas for the expression of this trend, largely because it had sat untouched on the market for so many years. The style of the three-bedroom house is Greek Revival, though records show its bones date back to the Quakers (it makes sense, then, that scenes for Mona Fastvold\u2019s award-winning The Testament of Ann Lee were shot<\/a> close by).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cBritain is a country of great eccentrics,\u201d muses interior designer Adam Greco, whose own view of \u2018British whimsy\u2019…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5867,810,9,11,10],"class_list":["post-329533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-design","tag-hotels","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}