"There's no real necessity to lock it," quips manager David Thomas, handing me my room key, "we are in the middle of nowhere." Actually, we are just six miles from foodie Ludlow, but hidden down mazy country lanes this handsome huddle of one-time farm buildings certainly feels remote. Walk out of the entrance and you are immediately picking your way through gambolling lambs, cow pats and spent shotgun cartridges (the surrounding Downton Estate keeps its gamekeepers busy) in fields that have exceptional views of surrounding Shropshire and Herefordshire: Long Mynd, Wenlock Edge, Clee Hill. There is no traffic noise, just birdsong.
Arranged around a pretty courtyard garden, Old Downton Lodge's historic buildings were turned into nine bedrooms in the 1990s. The look is butch, oak-led barn conversion. The bathrooms are a little dated (gold taps, etc) but generally it has worn well, and a more recent revamp of the soft furnishings has freshened it up. It is the period details, however, that impress: ancient heraldic and hunting tapestries; sloping stone windowsills, flagged floors and gnarled old timbers; the curious triangular windows in the dining room (vents in what was a Norman grain store).
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