Haven Retreat

The brief

A luxury wellness retreat of twelve guest rooms within an adaptive reuse of a nineteenth-century farmstead in the Yorkshire Dales. The brief called for a retreat experience that felt entirely rooted in its landscape — not a countryside hotel but a genuine immersion in the material life of the North.

The main farmhouse is restored and adapted to contain the reception, dining room, library, and treatment spaces. Eight of the twelve guest rooms occupy the original barns and byres, their rough stone walls insulated internally and their volumes left raw and unadorned. Four new timber pavilions set in the meadow offer the most private and immersive experience.

The landscape strategy removes all traces of the twentieth-century farmyard — concrete pads, Dutch barns, wire fences — and replaces them with dry-stone walling, wildflower meadow seeding, and a kitchen garden that supplies the restaurant. The spa is housed in a new low-building set into the hillside, its zinc roof continuing the slope of the field.