Introduction

A luxury castle hotel in the Yorkshire Dales, with fine dining, cookery school, spa and extensive grounds. Owned by the Cunliffe-Lister family since the 1880s, and the ancestral seat of the Earl of Swinton, guests at the hotel enjoy an authentic stately home experience. Rooms are furnished with antiques and family portraits, with the warmth and grandeur of a traditional English house.

There is a sense throughout the castle of it being more of a lavish home than a hotel, with individually designed bedrooms, each with generously sized bathrooms and exceptional views. Needless to say, the standards of service are excellent – discreet but far from stuffy, and the hotel has enjoyed wide acclaim and many awards in recognition of this. Guests particularly enjoy the relaxed environment, and with the 200 acres of parkland surrounding the hotel, one can very quickly leave all worldly cares and worries behind. The location, only 15 minutes from the A1, is deceptively convenient.

Food plays a prominent role at the hotel – from the grass roots commitment to minimising food miles and the four acre kitchen garden, to the award winning restaurant, cookery school (with seven chefs including TV celebrity Rosemary Shrager) and Deerhouse Dining in the Parkland. Other luxuries include an exclusive use spa with six treatment rooms and a busy programme of events that run in the hotel and grounds throughout the year for families, garden lovers and walkers.

The Cunliffe-Lister family also run the surrounding 20,000 acre Swinton Estate, and this is one of the many attractions that sets Swinton Park apart from other country house hotels. The Estate stretches from the River Ure in Wensleydale up onto the moorland dales and hotel guests have access to a whole host of country pursuits that include fishing, golf, falconry, riding and shooting. The Yorkshire Dales scenery is outstanding, and there are many popular spots within a walk or a short drive.

Swinton Park’s commitment to cutting food miles and carbon emissions and reducing power consumption, following the restoration of its walled garden, the installation of a carbon-neutral wood-chip boiler and an eco-friendly laundry, has been recognised at a national level.