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Self Catering Accommodation |
Margaret Francis |
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Three non-smoking and pet free stone self-catering (vacation rental) cottages, (with limited late availability in May) situated in my private courtyard in the picturesque market square of the highly regarded and superbly located Peak District village of Hartington, Derbyshire .One 6 person holiday cottage, over 500 years old sleeps six in three bedrooms (each having its own en suite!) and the other two self catering cottages are one bedroomed sleeping 2/3.All three cottages have the full Sky tv including sports, film, kids and music. |
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 Knowl Cottage from the front |
This luxury cottage is 700 years old, it was therefore built
sometime in the 1300s. It was originally of cruck construction, with a
thatched roof. Some time later the thatch was removed, and the walls
raised to build a second floor. Part of the original cruck beam can still
be seen downstairs and a further part is in fact featured upstairs. There
are still plenty of further old beams to be seen, although these further ones
are not as old as the cottage itself. The walls, in part well over two feet
thick, have a wonderful old cottage style feel about them.Relaxing
inside, you certainly feel you have stepped into the past, (with all the
mod-cons of course). Video and DVD of course, Sky tv in the living room,
but also terrestial TVs in each bedroom. This cottage has been graded with the maximum 5 Stars by the English Tourist Board. |
| In the spacious lounge there is an impressive log burning inglenook fireplace with open grate, bordered by dressed stone lintels. There are also original stone mullion windows and beams. Without doubt this is a most relaxing room. There is a television, video and CD player, but who needs these - whether in summer or winter, just sit in the leather settees and look at your surroundings! The cottage is well heated with fully controllable central heating in addition to this open fire place. All heating is included in the rental! |  Knowl Cottage Interior |
| This cottage boasts the very maximum Tourist Board grading of 5 star. There is a fully loaded superior custom built fully equipped kitchen, with gloss work-tops and real granite sink, fridge with good sized freezer compartment, micro-wave, dish-washer and washing machine, adjacent to the open-plan beamed dining room. On the first floor are three large bedrooms, all en-suite, two doubles and one twin. One en-suite (in an entirely seperate room off the bedroom) has bath with shower over, the others (again one of them in an entirely seperate room leading off the twin bedroom) have genuinely spacious shower cubicles with toilets and sinks. Again the age of the property is apparent from these bedrooms. All of the bedrooms have their own TVs in addition to that in the living room. | |
 Knowl Cottage from the courtyard |
In upgrading this cottage, to make this a truly superior cottage befitting its history, we can quite genuinely say that we have had little regard for the expense. Despite being in the heart of the village, once inside there is a real feeling of seclusion and peace. The cottage benefits from a telephone for out-going and in-coming calls. To the front there is a lovely cottage garden with seating from where you can see village life, whilst to the rear is a large courtyard with further seating. There is a barbecue in the courtyard, shared with the other two cottages. To the front is off-road parking for two larger/three smaller cars, with the option of further parking on the road in front of the cottage, or if taken it would be most unusual for there to be no further available parking within yards of the cottage |
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 Manifold and Dove cottages |
Behind Knowl Cottage are two further stone cottages, Manifold and Dove Cottages, converted from an old barn. Again these underwent substantial upgrading following our acquisition, once more with little regard for the expense, and now exude a modern ambience internally, despite the upgrading having exposed further charachter features, including of course various original beams. |
| Both holiday cottages have coal effect stoves in the living areas, two tvs each (one in the bedrooms), videos DVDs and full Sky Tv in the living room; again fully controllable central heating throughout, leather settees and leather chairs, fully equipped modern kitchens, again with gloss work-tops and real granite sinks, fridge-freezers, micro-wave, ceramic topped electric cookers (far more controllable for cooking than traditional electric cookers) and plenty of original old beams and other interesting features. Being in the courtyard, they are exceptionally quiet. There is provision for parking of one car per cottage in the courtyard. |  Dove Cottage - Kitchen |
 Manifold Cottage Bedroom |
Both have double beds, but one of them, Manifold Cottage can have a single bed added to the double bed, giving the option of sleeping three in a room or alternatively, using as two singles. Both bedrooms have an additional tv. the mattresses are extra thick. The overall floor space of the two cottages is roughly the same. They both have good sized well presented bathrooms with showers over the bath (Dove's is en-suite) |
| These two cottages have comfortably achieved the high grading of 4
Star awarded by the English Tourist Board.
On the far side of our courtyard is a fully equipped laundry room for use of the guests in the one bedroomed courtyard cotttages. (Knowl has its own facilities) Also in the laundry room is a freezer where excellent ready cooked meals can be obtained, at a cost of roughly £7 for two persons. There is a garage for the storage of bicycles (and motorbikes!) |
 Manifold Cottage Living Room |
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| My parents also have a number of cottages up in a spectacular
location on their non-working farm a mile up the road, between Hartington and
Biggin (See their web site for details of these cottages
www.cotterillfarm.co.uk).
In each cottage seven (!) information folders are provided, which have been highly praised by both the Tourist Board and our guests. In addition to containing the more usual but extensive brochures produced by the various organisers of the tourist attractions, we set out in a very personalised way extensive ideas prepared by ourselves over many pages on what to do in the immediate area, and much other information, as well, is given. Immodestly we do claim that they are amongst the best in the country. Unlike nearly all other cottages, those leaflets that are professionally produced by the (mainly) commercial tourist operators are stored in order of proximity to the cottages, so at a glance it can be appreciated how much travelling might possibly be involved in seeing something that has caught guests' attention. The advantage of these information packs is that they ensure that our guests have plenty of ideas of what to do, most usually say that they had never appreciated how much there was in the area, (even regular visitors to the Peak have said that), and many of our guests have commented that with the benefit of the information given they have been able to give their cars a holiday too, hardly (if at all) moving them all week. (In addition, weekly events lists are provided between May and the first half of September in advance of our guests' arrival to enable our guests to perhaps plan in advance particularly on the first couple of days of their stay with us what they might wish to do) |
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I believe that it is the extensive ideas, events lists and information provided and the quality and attention to detail both in the furnishings and the much praised housekeeping as well as their wonderful location that have ensured that there have always been a particularly high number of repeat visitors in the cottages |
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