FIND PEACE AND QUIET IN SUFFOLK

There’s nothing quite like turning off your phone, setting your email response to “out of office,” logging out of Facebook and Twitter and giving yourself up to pure peace and quiet. If it’s time you recharged your batteries (and we don’t mean the one in your laptop), there’s nowhere better to do it than on a Suffolk holiday.

Rustic, beautiful and lonely, Hex Cottage stands within a 4,500-acre private country estate in Sibton, Suffolk, known as the Wilderness Reserve. The first property in the Wilderness Reserve’s aptly named ‘Lost Collection,’ Hex Cottage, is the perfect place to disappear from the 21st century.

 

A former gamekeeper’s cottage that comes without electricity, Hex Cottage truly transports you to another, simpler time. You can curl up by the open fireplaces, cook on the wood-fired range, bake in the original bread oven, find fresh pastries and a newspaper delivered each morning in the outdoor larder, gather logs from the log store and even pick herbs from your own private herb garden. Lighting comes in the form of candles and storm lanterns; the Esse wood-fired range provides endless hot water; the beds are soft, the armchairs cosy, the rugs warm, and all around is woodland and meadows. Simply put, Hex Cottage is a very romantic place to stay.

 

With Hex Cottage or any of the other Wilderness Reserve properties you can rent the estate’s bespoke Shepherd’s Hut. Invented in Suffolk, these pretty little huts contain everything you need for a simple, comfortable existence: a double bed, wood burner, vanity unit with a (limited) supply of running water, a wardrobe and LED lighting. Best of all, this Shepherd’s Hut can be moved anywhere on the Wilderness Reserve’s 4,500 acre estate; you could take it to the middle of a secluded meadow and spend a night under a star-filled sky, then the next day sleep on the edge of the woods.

 

You can find out more about the Wilderness Reserve, its properties and the country activities available at www.wildernessreserve.com.

This extraordinary cottage is often described as the most remote place to holiday in Suffolk. The sole survivor of one of Suffolk’s lost villages by the same name, Purton Green has at its heart an extraordinarily well preserved mid 13th century timber-framed house. Owned and restored by the Landmark Trust, the cottage can now accommodate up to four people looking for a Suffolk holiday out of the ordinary.

 

“Arriving at this thatched and timbered building on foot the centuries fall away,” says the Landmark Trust. “Inside the late medieval walls survives a hall dating back to 1250, a great rarity whose elaborate decoration evokes its important past. The house now stands surrounded by Suffolk fields, with unchanging Suffolk countryside in all directions.” You can find out more about renting this wonderful Suffolk cottage on the Landmark Trust’s website.

Though not luxuriously furnished or decorated, the Coastguard Cottages at Shingle Street are incredibly special places for a Suffolk break. This handful of cottages arranged in a row is situated on the very edge of the Suffolk coast, overlooking the great North Sea. You can find out how to rent one of the Coastguard Cottages here, or sit back and listen to what one resident, Tim Miller had to say about the effects of such a remote, beautiful location:

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