NEW MILTON, Hampshire, England — The New Forest here goes back to William the Conquerer, who created it in 1079 as a royal hunting reserve, mainly for deer.
Earlier there were Stone Age-settlers who cut down most of the dense forest; then came the Bronze and Iron ages, when drainage ditches were created in the moorland. The Romans started a pottery industry in the area, but the remaining clues of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes as inhabitants are mostly in place names.
The New Forest has withstood the loss of many trees — especially to build ships for several centuries. Much of the area is waste, and the soil is poor, but it is able to grow trees and provide pasture for herbivores. It is still grazed by deer — and by the cattle, sheep, hogs, horses and mules that belong to the forest residents long defined as the “Commoners.”
The New Forest is also popular for recreation, especially walking and camping, riding horses, and fishing; for children’s activities; and for places to eat, from cozy tearooms to the Michelin-starred Marryat Restaurant of Chewton Glen, a most comfortable and welcoming country house-hotel.
Chewton Glen, on the southern edge of the New Forest, is a pleasant walk to the seacoast almost opposite the Isle of Wight.
This year, Chewton Glen was named by the U.S. edition of Conde Nast Traveler’s Readers’ Choice Awards as the Best Hotel: British Isles and was ranked No. 2 in the list of the top 100 hotels in the world. Chewton Glen is affiliated with the Relais & Chateau organization of prestigious hotels and inns.
Chewton Glen’s spa has received many international awards. Like the hotel, the spa is comfortable and relaxing. It offers a stunning indoor pool and, for summer, an outdoor pool as well.
The hotel, like the spa, knows how to pamper guests in the quiet country setting.
The folks at Chewton Glen also know how to celebrate a festive Christmas, again in understated elegance in the decor but with tempting menus for the holidays from Christmas through New Year’s Day. The Marryat Restaurant has held a Michelin star for 21 years.
The menus are the work of executive chef Luke Matthews, a local man who attended college in Bournemouth and joined the Chewton Glen staff in 1993; he was senior sous chef until his promotion in 2003.
Local lamb; lobster, turbot and other fresh seafood from nearby Christchurch and Lymington; Scottish beef; tasty British pork; roast partridge and game from the New Forest; and fresh vegetables from the area find their place on the menus. This is not to overlook the hearty broths and refined consommes or the delectable and innovative desserts such as a terrine of gingerbread mousse.
Guests may begin their celebrations with a Christmas Eve dinner that includes canapes; cream of butternut squash and Parmesan soup or chicken liver and foie gras parfait or wild smoked Scottish salmon. Then they choose seared sea bass with mussels or roast rack of local lamb with spinach, mushroom duxelle, tomato confit, potatoes Anna and tarragon vinegar jus.
Dessert is iced champaign parfait, a soup of exotic fruits.
The Christmas Day lunch begins with lobster, smoked salmon, fresh prawns, caviar and Cornish crab, followed by a red plum sorbet. Then guests may choose between the roast Wrolstad Bronze turkey or the fillet of turbot with champagne and caviar.
For dessert: the traditional Christmas pudding with brandy sauce or a terrine of Valrhona chocolate (milk, white and dark) mousse with a Morello cherry compote. Then coffee, mince pies and Valrhona chocolates.
The Christmas Day dinner begins with cocktails in the lounge, followed by the sumptuous buffet, where offerings include chicken consomme; crab with lime mayonnaise; three types of cured salmon; cold Scottish langoustines with chili and soy sauce; San Daniele prosciutto, foie gras terrine, cold local lobster, and tomato and buffalo mozzarella.
The main courses are roast Label Anglaise chicken, braised lamb shoulder, wild mushroom risotto, and Dover sole. The desserts include creme brulee; lemon meringue pie; baked orange cheesecake; and ice creams in flavors from vanilla to plum pudding, and sorbets — coconut, cherry, lemon, pear or mango.
Although Americans tend to take it easy on the day after Christmas, this is Boxing Day in the United Kingdom, another holiday and another occasion for feasting.
Guests at Chewton Glen may choose from 500 international wines, although wines have been chosen to accompany the holiday feasts — bottlings from France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Hungary, New Zealand and Australia. On the Boxing Day menu is Lemelsons Six Vineyards Pinot Noir 2002 from Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
The Boxing Day menu includes a cappuccino of white beans and truffle; green and white asparagus salad; fillet of Scottish beef or turbot fillet. Desserts are a warm ginger gateau and a clementine trifle.
The Dec. 27 menu is more relaxed but equally tempting, with the likes of prosciutto served with chargrilled spiced figs and Parmesan; a terrine of local game; Scottish scallops; breast of duck with mush-rooms, savoy cabbage and bacon, globe artichokes, crushed potatoes and blood-orange jus; or, with a touch of Thai, a nage of monkfish, scallops and red mullet with coconut milk, lemon grass and coriander. How about a pineapple tarte Tatin for dessert?
For the next few days, the menus are back to normal — but still inspired — until Chewton Glen’s New Year House Party, beginning with a Dorset cream tea in the Lounge from 4 to 5 p.m. Dec. 31. Then time to nap and change for the black-tie reception, dinner, dancing, and celebrations at midnight.
With all this food and wine, it seems necessary that the Chewton Glen Spa & Health Club is open 12 hours — until 8 p.m. — Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 and 2.
For more than exertion in the spa, guests may choose from other activities, including swimming and tennis (both indoors), golf (a nine-hole course) and snooker — or a brisk walk to the sea and back. Board games and DVDs and videos are available at the reception desk.
In warmer seasons, guests may play croquet, swim in the outdoor pool, stroll to the sea or amble about the 130 acres of Chewton Glen.
The walk to the sea takes about 15 minutes, across the golf course, through the woods and down the Chewton Bunny — a small wooded river valley that opens out onto the coastline, with lovely views over to the Isle of Wight and the Solent.
The main Chewton Glen building may have existed in 1732, when “Chewton Glen House” and the surrounding land appeared in documents. Capt. Frederick Marryat stayed at Chewton Glen at times in the 1840s when he was researching material for his novel “The Children of the New Forest.”
The captain’s brother George owned the property from 1837 until 1855, when it was sold to the Elphinstone family.
In the decade before Martin and Birgit Skan bought Chewton Glen in 1967, the property had three different owners, one of whom turned the house into a hotel.
The Skans began working their magic; credit Mrs. Skan with the decoration and acquisition of antiques that make each room unique, whether in the original house or in the addition that is perpendicular to the house. In just 10 years with the Skans in charge, Chewton Glen won the United Kingdom’s prestigious Egon Ronay Gold Plate Award for Hotel of the Year.
On the Skans’ 25th anniver-sary as owners, Mr. Skan was named Hotelier of the Year and Chewton Glen was named Hotel of the Year by the English Tourist Board.
This expanded Chewton Glen has 23 suites and 35 bedrooms. The baths in the new wing are sensational, particularly the white-tiled showers, long enough for two persons. They have large, flat overhead rain-showers at each end — and abundant hot water, too.
Each bedroom here also has a sofa and upholstered chairs, chests and tables and a fine view of the croquet lawn. The new rooms and the spa can be reached without going outdoors.
The original house has plenty of comfortable spots for reading a book or mingling with other guests and enjoying conversations.
This romantic Chewton Glen also is popular with honey-mooners.
Although New Milton is the nearest town, many guests enjoy drives along the coast, visiting Christchurch or Lymington.
One of the most interesting spots is Beaulieu, the village, as well as Beaulieu, the river; Beaulieu, the estate; and Palace House, all of which (yes, including the river) have been owned by the Montagu family since 1538.
The 7,000-acre estate includes most of the village. Along the roads in the area, the red diamonds of the Montagu family are displayed on gateposts at entrances to the estate.
In these parts, the pro-nunciation of Beaulieu is not at all French, but a wonderful example of Brits’ amazing knack of pronouncing foreign words in their own style. Here it is pronounced as if it were spelled “Bewly,” rhyming with “newly.”
A hunting lodge had been built on the site before King John gave the land to the Cistercian order to build an abbey early in the 13th century. The royal hunting ground was known by its Latin name, Bellus Locus Regis (beautiful place of the king).
The abbey was almost demolished in the 16th century during the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Sir Thomas Wriothesley bought Beaulieu in 1538; in 1667, another Thomas Wrio-thesley died, leaving three daughters who drew lots for parts of the estate. Thus, Elizabeth Wriothesley won the estate and married a Montagu. The first baron Montagu was Lord Henry Scott, who became owner of Beaulieu in 1867. The present Lord Montagu inherited Beaulieu in 1951 and opened Palace House to the public to help make ends meet.
The Montagus also have a National Motor Museum and still own the 7,000 acres, the river, Palace House and gardens, most of Beaulieu village and also Buckler’s Hard village.
Another New Forest attrac-tion is in Southampton — the Exbury Gardens, which were begun in the 1920s by Lionel de Rothschild. His son, Edmund, continued to carry on the garden project.
Exbury is particularly noted for its variety of azaleas and rhododendrons, many of which were developed there. The 200 acres of gardens, on the east bank of the Beaulieu River, have been open to the public for 50 years. Spring is high season for Exbury, but as in the New Forest and Chewton Glen, any season works its spell in this part of England.
Through the forest to Chewton Glen
For information on Chewton Glen — in New Milton, Hampshire BH25 6QS, England — call 01425-275341 or 800/344-5087; fax 01425-272310 or 800/398-4534; or visit www.chewtonglen.com/about.
Chewton Glen can arrange transportation between the hotel and airports such as London Heathrow and Southampton (023/8062-0021) or from the train stations at Southampton and New Milton.
The New Forest’s official Web site, www.thenewforest.co.uk, provides history of the forest as well as activities and accommodations.
For more information about Beaulieu, visit www.beaulieu.co.uk. Just pronounce it “Bewly,” please.
The Hampshire County Council’s Web site, www.hants.gov.uk, contains information for visitors to the county.
For information about visiting the Rothschild family’s Exbury Gardens and its steam railway, go to www.exbury.co.uk.
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