The view from the front door of Glebe House is of rolling, ruched-up fields, hidden ha-has, evergreen woodland, ancient farmsteads and their flocks—and a gardener riding a sit-on mower, carefully clipping the front lawn.
Glebe House: a former vicarage overlooking the unchanged Coly Valley in East Devon.
With the world in lockdown, the couple began transforming the 15 acres surrounding Glebe House, planting a vegetable and cutting garden, creating a space for pigs and chickens, and converting an old garage into an on-site bakery and temperature-controlled aging room for salumi production, a craft honed by Hugo in Italy.
The kitchen garden, which directly informs what appears on the daily-changing menu.
Hugo, Olive, and their son, Rufus. Craft cooking and artisan techniques are central to the experience of Glebe House, but so too is art and creativity.
Guests enter via the garden room, which is shaded by a vine that Hugo uses to make his equivalent of dolmades. The terracotta tiles are by Artisans of Devizes.
The central hallway, where guests check in.
The kitchen hatch (hand-painted by Olive) is stocked with freshly baked sourdough.
The dining room, which overlooks the Coly Valley, has been painted in wide stripes (‘Puck’ by Little Greene).
“The interiors have an element of whimsy that perhaps you wouldn’t normally have in your own home, but that really works in this setting,” says Alexandra.
The pink-and-white striped sofa belonged to Hugo’s parents and has sat in the same room for years.
The ground floor bathroom, with Chintz Constance wallpaper by Ottoline in green and lilac. The linen curtain is from The Cloth Shop.
The Old Kitchen is a spacious, self-contained (and dog-friendly) annex situated in the oldest part of the house, which dates back to the 1800s.
There are five bedrooms upstairs in the main house. This is the Copper Beech Room (named after the glistening, mature copper beech outside the window).
This room is called The Old Boys’ Room as it’s where Hugo and his brother once slept.
The bathroom in The Old Boys’ Room, featuring a vintage washstand and an arch of floral prints.
The characterful Tulip Room is papered in Little Wild Tulips in Red by Ottoline.
The glowing Morning Room boasts spectacular views over Coly Valley.
The Rose Room is the largest room in the house and is named after the climbing pink rose that frames the external windows.
It features a freestanding tub and an iron canopy bed. Bed linen is sourced from the Dorset-based company Pushpanjale Cottons.
Tucked under an oak tree in a quiet corner of the garden is Southleigh Wood Cabin. Inside, a booklet explains how the entire cabin was constructed from trees retrieved, milled, machined, and assembled within a two-mile radius of the cabin.
The cabin has been divided into three: a seating area featuring a wall hanging from Slowdown Studio; a handcrafted kitchenette made from local beech and tulip wood; and a sleeping area and shower room.
The mural next to the bed was painted by the local artist Rosie Harbottle, inspired by the flowers that grow at Glebe.
There is a pervasive nostalgia to Glebe House—a feeling that’s stoked by the spirited interiors, family keepsakes, and the carefully crafted food but also by the physical presence of the former owners, Emma and Chuck, who still come here to play tennis and drink coffee in the garden room.