One-Minute Hotel / Five Acre Barn, Suffolk
A reasonably-priced architectural gem in some easily accessible and beautiful countryside perfect for a high-style weekend getaway? Where are those wellies?
So, where are we?
In some lovely countryside down a lane a couple of miles from Aldeburgh, the famously pretty Suffolk seaside town where gay composer Benjamin Britten used to live. It’s a couple of hours’ drive from the right side of London - that would be east or north - and an hour and a half by train from Liverpool Street then a short hop in a taxi. Do what we did and go to THE OUT and rent a beautiful motor like this amazing convertible F-Type Jag delivered to your door. You deserve nice things!
And where we’re staying...?
Five Acre Barn, an architecturally outstanding little community based around a huge converted barn with some very smart extensions on one side and the original country cottage - now the owners’ quarters - on the other. It’s all surrounded by gardens - Japanese, gravel, natural - and, beyond that, fields. The sea is a short walk away, Aldeburgh less than an hour by foot, five minutes in your F-Type.
What’s the style?
The original barn is a huge space that has been turned into a kitchen, dining area and a lounge based around a huge roaring wood-burning stove. What first strikes you is white (even if the huge barn door is egg-yolk yellow), plywood, poured concrete, parquet and windows. The furniture is mid-century modern with a long refectory table with benches for breakfast and ethnic touches like tapestries and woven installations with plenty of interesting bowls and art and ceramics and magazines and art books and pictures and plants - lots of plants! - to keep the eye busy. Well, you can get away with it in a space this, erm, spacious.
And the rooms?
Moving into the modern extension, a strange jagged-roofed row at right-angles to the barn, along a gallery with more pictures and plants and bits and bobs are four mezzanine rooms and one larger end room that opens on both sides to a terrace, those gardens and the countryside. Inside our larger room, the vibe is chic but cosy. Proper design items like Corbusier furniture and Ercol tables sit in homely gorgeousness: two bathrooms, one blindingly white with circular mosaic tiling and a free-standing bath, the other accessible with a wet-room-style shower, under(concrete)floor heating, plants, Heals blankets to wrap around you, a coffee station with real coffee and none of that Nespresso nonsense, books, magazines, rugs. You could live here and be very happy. We found ourselves wondering where to put in a kitchen. The other rooms are smaller with seating areas and mezzanine bed spaces and French windows leading out onto mini terraces surrounded by long grass for privacy. In summer, you bring the outside in, as they like to say on Grand Designs.
Is there a story?
David and Bruce, a professional couple, sold up their Peckham home and bought the barn and adjoining cottage and commissioned architects Blee Halligan to help them create an out-of-town bolthole mainly for people coming down to Aldeburgh for the Festival of Music and the Arts, the other Britten-related activities and general loveliness and prettiness of the area. Two years later and… ta da!
And to eat?
It’s basically a B&B, so breakfast is your main meal, even if during restrictions they made a foray into, you know, cooking. But what a breakfast it is! Granola, muesli and fresh fruit to pick at while you wait for your order - put in the night before - of full English or eggs benedict or mushrooms on toast or the best avocado toast we have ever tasted. Oh and home-baked bread. Served with fresh cafetière coffee and made with only the finest local ingredients.
So, to sum up...
Bearing in mind the price - around £100, slightly more for the bigger room, depending on season - this is smart luxury off the scale. The hosts are friendly but unobtrusive - they and their dogs pretty much give you the run of the place - while the architecture is a thing of beauty all in a lovely part of the country with tons to explore. And bearing in mind there are only five rooms, it’s ideal for a full self-catering mates’ takeover! Oh and your parked-up Jaguar F-Type from THE OUT looks amazing against that architecture, Instagram fans.
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