Hot List Hotels 2008
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The Mansion House
Luton
England
LU1 3TQ
Tel: 44 1582 734437
If it has ever been your fantasy to be Mr. Darcy's houseguest at a grand eighteenth-century country estate, the opportunity has arrived. After a recent stint as a location for films, the magnificent mansion, together with its 1,065-acre park, has been transformed into a 144-room resort with a golf course and a spa. The mission of the new owners has been to painstakingly restore the stately home, rather than redesign it with the waggish postmodern adornments currently in vogue with hotel renovations. While some of the decor fails to complement the soaring grandeur of the architecture and is instead disappointingly drab, the place is stunning nonetheless. There is a wide choice of accommodations, from period rooms in the old house (the grandest are named after the dignitaries who once stayed there) to recently constructed ones in the adjacent Parkland Wing, the more distant Robert Adam Stables building (where the spa is housed), and the Flower Garden Wing (near the golf course). Dining can be casual at Adam's Brasserie or resplendent amid the Aubusson tapestries and French windows in the Wernher dining room. In addition to golf and spa treatments, there are genteel country pursuits: tennis, croquet, boating, fishing, clay pigeon shooting, and snooker.
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