The Best Hotels to Book Near Wellington Country Park

A huge and handsome country house, dripping with original features, Highfield Park was once the country home of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and the location – just 1mi (1.6km) from Wellington Country Park – is extremely convenient for easy escapes from London. Enormous rooms have an intriguing mix of period and modern trim, with English antiques juxtaposed against Nordic-style rugs, fabrics and design furniture. The food is impressive, too, with ingredients from the hotel’s own organic farm.

Behind a dignified Georgian facade, the Wellington Arms is part of the historic Wellington Estate, named for the boot-wearing Duke who stamped his identity all over this part of Hampshire. Many come for the food – with superior pub meals created using top-notch local ingredients, served indoors or out in the pub garden – but the rooms are just as appealing, with historical elements but a smart, modern attitude, best expressed in the stylish metro tile-lined bathrooms.

Hook House is a home with a history, occupied by a string of wealthy families in times past (and even, reputedly, by the odd ghost). The house was built in 1684, and the luxury king room hints back to this time, with a giant four-poster bed, floral paper and oryx antler table lamps. Most rooms are more modern, though, with a tasteful mix of antique bits and bobs and modern fabrics and throws.

Not your average chain hotel, the Hampshire Four Seasons lounges lavishly in an 18th-century manor house amid 500 acres (200ha) of grounds. Supersized rooms in celadon green and duck egg blue have flowing drapes and period-correct carpets. Tall windows overlook the estate, the setting for clay-pigeon shooting, tennis and croquet. Completing the luxe package are fine dining, afternoon teas in the library, a highwire course and riding stable for kids and a gorgeous conservatory pool.

Tipping its hat to Italian Palladian architecture, Warbrook House was designed by master architect John James in 1724 and looks almost as grand today, ringed by a baffle of restored gardens, grounds and even its own canal. Rooms are plush and lush rather than fusty, with giant curving windows, velvet upholstered headboards on the beds and botanical wallpaper on feature walls. More than 120 acres (50ha) of grounds push the modern world out of sight and mind.

Cooking facilities and outdoor space are the keys to easy stays in the country, and the studios and rooms at the Kingsley have simple guest kitchens and access to a tidy garden screened off by high hedges. The name is a nod to local writer Reverend Charles Kingsley, author of Westward Ho! and The Water Babies. With sparkling white sheets and gleaming bathrooms, it’s a quiet and calm hub within easy reach of Wellington Country Park.

In the country house rankings for outdoor space, Heckfield Place trumps most of the local competition with 400 acres (160ha) of gardens, woodland and its own serene lake. The grand Georgian house is equally attractive, a vision in red brick and Portland stone. Inside, rooms take the traditional country house idea and upend it, mixing Chinoiserie and antique furniture with bold paint tones, modern art and pin-straight lines. The restaurants (plural) are similarly sculptural, with bare brickwork and old oak beams in abundance, and interesting menus featuring fire-cooked foodstuffs.

If only an urban setting will do, voco Reading will certainly start conversations. Wrapped up in curved glass, the hotel hovers futuristically beside the Madejski Stadium, home ground for Reading Football Club. Inside, it’s bright and modernist: communal spaces sit calmly under lofty ceilings, while bedrooms are full of light and pleasing geometric patterns in subtle colours. There’s a pool and a jacuzzi, multiple places to eat and, of course, football on tap at the stadium next door.