In the 1840s Captain Frederick Marryat, naval officer and novelist, is believed to have stayed at Chewton Glen while visiting his brother George, who owned the house on the edge of the New Forest from 1837 to 1855. He was gathering material for The Children of the New Forest, published in 1847. The house has been a hotel since the 1960s, and the Marryat connection survives in its rooms: the largest suite carries his name, others are named after his books, and the Marryat Suite is one of the places a couple can marry. A wedding here can be twenty guests in that suite or 140 at dinner in the Lake Suite, with the party sleeping in the house or in treehouses in the wooded ravine that gave Chewton Glen its name.
A captain’s brother and a novel of the forest
The house is older than its literary connection. Historic documents suggest it was built early in the eighteenth century, and land and premises called Chewton Glen House are recorded in 1732. The name comes from the tree-lined ravine a short distance to the south, also called Chewton Bunny.
Frederick Marryat joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman in 1806, serving under Lord Cochrane, and devised Marryat’s Code, a widely used system of maritime flag signals that helped earn him a fellowship of the Royal Society. He resigned his commission in 1830 to write full time. The Children of the New Forest was one of his last books. It opens in 1647, during the Civil War, and follows the orphaned Beverley children as they hide from the Roundheads in the forest and learn to live off the land, much of it in the countryside around the New Forest village of Sway. Marryat died in 1848, the year after it was published.
Inside the hotel the connection is kept in the names on the doors. The Marryat Suite, the largest of the suites, sits in the original eighteenth century manor house, with a sitting room, a cloakroom and a private terrace over the lawns and parkland. Other suites take their names from his novels: Jacob Faithful, published in 1834, and Masterman Ready, his shipwreck story of 1841.
From family house to country house hotel
In 1947 the Duval family bought the house with its farm, stables and land, restored the old buildings and later turned the house into a hotel. The Skan family bought it in 1966, when only two of its rooms had a bathroom of their own; within a few years they had added new kitchens, a dining room and 45 bedrooms with private bathrooms, and they ran Chewton Glen for 40 years. Today it belongs to Iconic Hotels & Resorts, part of L+R, alongside Cliveden House and The Lygon Arms. It is a member of Relais & Châteaux, and the Michelin Guide gives it two Michelin Keys.
The estate runs to 130 acres of woodland, gardens and parkland, a short walk from the sea. There is a walled kitchen garden, and the menus use its produce where they can. The grounds also hold a nine-hole golf course, a croquet lawn and indoor and outdoor tennis courts.
Vows in the Morning Room, the Walled Garden or the Marryat Suite
The Morning Room is licensed for civil ceremonies of up to 80 guests. It is a light room looking over the courtyard and the croquet lawn, and it can be set with rows of chairs for a full ceremony or with a sofa for a very small one. For vows in the open air there is the Walled Garden, which changes with the seasons and also takes a ceremony of up to 80.
The smallest weddings have settings of their own. The Marryat Suite holds a ceremony of up to 20 guests, with drinks afterwards on its terrace above the grounds, and The Hideaway, one of the Treehouse suites, holds up to ten among the trees. Both belong to Just the Two of Us, Chewton Glen’s package for an intimate wedding.
Dinner for 140, or a table in the cellar
The Lake Suite is the hotel’s largest private room. It is on the ground floor, with its own entrance, a pre-function lounge and a terrace over the gardens and parkland. It seats up to 140 for the wedding breakfast and takes up to 200 for the evening reception and dancing. The kitchen can serve anything from a formal banquet to a cocktail-style reception, with the option of an evening supper, and the wedding menus follow the seasons.
Smaller parties dine within The Dining Room, which spreads across a series of distinct rooms. The Glass House, a private space with its own terrace, seats up to 24 for a wedding breakfast. The Wine Room, a glass-fronted private cellar lined with bottles, seats up to 16. The Summer House, a light garden room, is also used for wedding breakfasts.
A night in the treetops
Chewton Glen has 72 bedrooms and suites: 58 in the hotel and 14 Treehouse suites set apart in the wooded valley of Chewton Bunny. Blue Forest, the treehouse specialists, produced the original concept design, with the suites raised on lightweight pillars among the canopy. Each has a private deck and an outdoor hot tub, and some sleep up to eight. Guests reach them on foot along a woodland path from the main house, or the team will arrange a lift.
On the wedding morning a couple can get ready in a bedroom, a suite or a Treehouse. Everyone staying has the spa as part of the visit: a 17 metre pool, a hydrotherapy pool, an outdoor whirlpool, saunas and steam rooms. The day after, The Kitchen by James Martin, an informal restaurant with its own cookery school, is five to seven minutes’ walk across the estate.
Taking the whole house
For a couple who want the house to themselves, Exclusively Yours gives them Chewton Glen from 3pm on the day of arrival until 11am on the day of departure: all 58 bedrooms, the 14 Treehouses, the function rooms and sitting rooms of the main house, the grounds and the hotel’s helipad. Two parts of the estate stay open to others through their own entrances: the spa, which club members and day guests keep using, and The Kitchen by James Martin, which keeps serving its diners. Exclusive use is priced by bespoke quotation.
Within the running hotel, the starting package is An English Original, from £265 per guest. It covers room hire, a drinks reception with canapés, a three-course wedding breakfast with wine and a Champagne toast, and a night in a Junior Suite for the couple. To Love and to Cherish adds flowers, stationery, entertainment and evening food, and Bespoke Weddings builds the day around a couple’s own choices.
Reaching the edge of the forest
Chewton Glen stands on Christchurch Road in New Milton, Hampshire. New Milton station, served by South Western Railway, is 1.7 miles away, about six minutes by car. Bournemouth Airport is about 20 minutes away and Southampton Airport about 45, and London is under two hours by road. An on-site wedding coordinator plans the day with the couple and keeps a list of recommended suppliers, from planners and florists to photographers and fireworks. Roam’s film of Rebecca and Thomas’s wedding at Chewton Glen is on YouTube. For other weddings in the area, read about Highcliffe Castle and The Montagu Arms at Beaulieu, browse Hampshire wedding venues, or see what a wedding costs in Hampshire.
The first decision at Chewton Glen is whether to marry within the running hotel, sharing it with its other guests, or to take the whole house for the night with Exclusively Yours. Couples who know which they want can read the Chewton Glen profile and check your date.
