Why Farm Hotels are Trending in the U.K. and Should You Try One
Traditional agritourism gets an upgrade at the U.K.’s new-era farm stays — chic spots that are increasingly geared to discerning, food-focused travellers.
“People want to know where their food comes from,” says Luke Houghton, slicing a plump purple black beauty tomato, fresh from the vine. It’s sweet and earthy, almost smoky. At Knepp, in Sussex, polytunnels are packed with heirloom and artisan tomatoes with bold names like Brad's atomic grape and evil olive — along with unique cultivars of aubergine, summer squash and fragrant racks of drying garlic and onions. “It smells like confit garlic, right?” says Luke, with a gleeful smile. He should know.
The Knepp chef recently went part-time in the kitchen so he could join the estate’s team of growers out in the garden, where he’s also tasked with giving guided tours. “After 15 years cheffing, I was ready for a change,” he says. “I’m like a bridge between the kitchen and garden — there are things growers don't see with a chef's eyes.”
Change — or careful evolution — feels ever present at Knepp, the 3,500-acre West Sussex estate transformed by owners Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree in 2001 from a failed arable and dairy farm to rewilded land. The beavers, white storks, nightingales and turtle doves that have since returned to this pioneering rewilding site are now joined by free-roaming livestock and some 140,000 annual visitors, eager to take a guided safari, explore 16 miles of walking paths or overnight in glamping accommodation. And, since 2023, visit Knepp’s organic Market Garden and Wilding Kitchen restaurant.
Beyond the polytunnel, plots of pumpkins, corn and beets are overlooked by beehives on tall posts. “They’re homes for pollinators; not for harvesting honey,” says Luke. “We practice regenerative agriculture,” he says, an increasingly popular practice that seeks to improve the health of the land. “We’re ‘low till’, so we don't dig too much to avoid disturbing the soil’s insects, fungi and microbiome.” Fallow plots are planted with pollinator-enticing wildflowers, some of which are cut for bouquets that are sold in the estate shop. “Cover crops like these help to protect the soil from drying out in the sun, and their roots are left to compost into the ground.”
Soil regeneration has become a clarion call for environmentalists and food producers working to revive nutrient-depleted topsoils — and, by extension, the health of the crops grown in them. “But food is kind of like a byproduct for Knepp,” says Luke. “Diversity is the priority. So, we monitor things like birdsong and insect numbers while growing to make sure we’re aligned. And I think you can taste this in the food.”
A Food-Led Farm Stay Boom
Like farms across the country, Knepp’s food is a boon for public engagement. People visit to get tips on growing veggies, try them in the restaurant and, in turn, learn about the finer points of biodiversity, regenerative farming and rewilding. A booming area of travel and tourism, ‘farmcationing’ is firmly in fashion — and interest goes far beyond social media’s current ‘cottagecore’ obsession. This year, Airbnb reported ‘farmcation fever’ with bookings up 14% on last summer, led by gen Zs seeking fresh air, a slower pace of travel and good food. Other operators are seeing a similar surge in interest.
“Over the past two years, we’ve seen a 50% increase in farm stay listings,” says Sarah de Vere-Drummond, co-founder of Kip Hideaways, a booking platform for boutique UK stays. “They’ve quietly become one of our fastest-growing, strongest-performing categories; places connected to the landscape, with food as a major pull. For example, farm stays that offer outdoor cooking, honesty shops, kitchen gardens, local bakeries and produce picked or baked that morning.” She points to the Alcoves, whose architectural cabins punctuate a regenerative farm landscape in Norfolk, and Thornfalcon, where you can sip small-batch estate cider and wines, staying in chic cabins overlooking organic orchard-and-vine-clad Somerset hills.
(Related: 10 Best English Farm Stays to Escape the City.)
Farmers, of course, have been diversifying for decades; catering to visitors is an increasingly crucial component for survival. The 1990s saw glamping innovators Feather Down Farms popularise a model for farmers to offer more than a tent pitch and a standpipe, introducing guest families to activities like egg collecting and camp cooking under safari-style canvas. While farm food was put front and centre by the likes of River Cottage and Riverford Organic, who’ve been enticing foodie travellers to the communal tables of their Devonshire farms for decades, both now have places where visitors can stay, too.
While farm shops have grown in scope and scale, and glamping tents and farm cafes have become a standard feature of the UK’s rural landscape, things are becoming decidedly more upscale. Cotswold’s farm-to-fork pioneer Daylesford Organic, which has three restaurants on its 2,500-acre farm, has spawned several cafe offshoots in London’s smarter boroughs. Meanwhile, its cottages and three farm-adjacent pubs, including The Wild Rabbit, have become quite the fashionable addresses to flex your farm fandom. Like Knepp’s Wilding Kitchen, all three of Daylesford’s on-site restaurants have been awarded a Michelin Green Star, noting restaurants that combine culinary excellence with outstanding commitments to sustainable gastronomy and environmental practices – although the organisation will be retiring the designation at the end of 2026.
Farming for the Future
Offering a novel place to eat, stay and see food production in action, game-changer farm stays are doing much to champion not just organic agriculture and farm-to-fork dining, but also regenerative farming, sustainable practices, heritage breeds and the small-batch production of everything from English wine and ciders to artisan cheeses, chutneys and more. Farm food is becoming a winning blueprint for culinary stays. In summer 2027, boutique hotel group The Pig will add The Pig on the Farm to its string of Southern English restaurants with rooms, centring the 35-room Warwickshire hotel around kitchen gardens, complete with a smokery for estate meats and a hyperlocal food menu.
And then there are estates whose farm-stay focus has evolved over generations. Cabins have fringed Fritton Lake since the 1970s, the two-mile-long watery heart of the 55-acre Somerleyton Estate on the Norfolk-Suffolk borders. In the past decade, upscale ‘Koto’ cabins have been added to the woodland, along with rewilded farmland dedicated to free-roaming animals and livestock whose grazing and footfall reengineers landscapes more as nature intended. Guests relaxing in the hot tub on their cabin’s deck might spot deer and pigs rootling around the undergrowth, while estate meat, game and garden veggies feature on Clubhouse menus.
Owner Hugh Crossley — the fourth baron to head up the Somerleyton Estate — is pragmatic about how rewilding and more traditional, ‘degenerative’ farming practices can coexist. “Of course, we all need to think about how we farm meat,” he says, noting the damaging effects of intensive animal agriculture. “And I can hunt a deer to supply the restaurant, for example, but if you don’t want waste…” he shrugs. The specifics of nose-to-tail dining, he notes, don’t suit all restaurants. “And it’s our commercial cereal crops — and the cabins — that allow us to indulge, if you like, in rewilding and invest more in regenerative farming.”
Nature-led projects work more effectively if scaled up and shared; Fritton helped spearhead Wild East, an East Anglian collective of farms at the forefront of an ambitious nationwide programme to return 20% of the UK to nature. And for anyone who’s taken an evening swim at Fritton, herons and bats swooping overhead, cattle and sheep grazing on the hills rising above lakeshore woodlands, funding new-era agriculture with a farm stay seems like an indulgence worth repeating.
