Newsletters
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Newsletters from 2022
2024 - 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020
New property arrival - Terrarium
Suspended over a crystalline natural pool that starts where the sleek interior ends, this modern family home is biophilic architecture at its best. An eco build crafted from silvered timber and cocooned by a regenerative garden, Terrarium happens where net zero ambitions meet award-winning design. First made famous on Grand Designs, this iconic retreat is now available for limited weeks during 2023.
Yuletide greetings
As you wind up 2022 in a flurry of hand pies and clinking coupes, we pop in to tip our hat and thank you for bringing Unique Homestays into your fold. Whether you´ve stayed under our roofs or built castles in the sky while perusing our digital space, we honour your seat at our table this Christmas. With iconic new arrivals and a fresh calendar of content to inspire your wanderlust, we cannot wait to host you in 2023. Until then... eat, drink, and be merry.
Scavenger hunts
Lakeland homes with Narnia-esque ambience, mountain farmhouses riddled with heirlooms, and life-sized gingerbread houses where floral installations grace the dinner table; this month we celebrate some of our most scout-and-seeker homes.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Charity, Ellesmera Mill
New property arrival - Usonia
Picture a Brooklyn loft with white bricks and polished floors, then give it a dose of shrinking potion and tuck it away in the Scottish treetops; this is Usonia, a mid-century modern home on St Cuthbert´s Way. If you carry a torch for cubic silhouettes, but have a soft spot for the Nordic decadence of sauna and hot tub living, this Melrose hideout will make your modernist heart beat a little faster.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Usonia
Go where the halls are already decked
From peaceful escapes in the wilds to maritime retreats that feel at the ends of the earth, these one-of-a-kind homes have doors a flung, waiting for spontaneous seekers of a last-minute festive break. While mornings pass in a blur of ribbons and croissants, evenings are for cheese and television guides perused from fire-warmed snugs. Whatever the celebratory season looks like for you, be it a rambunctious party or the hopeful perusing of horoscopes, we have a hideaway to suit.
New property arrival - Lightkeepers
With picture windows that frame the Godrevy Island beacon from Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, Lightkeepers is an earthen cradle where ceramics and selenite interlace with knotted lumber and elemental treasures. Here are floors slabbed in eggshell stone and slaked lime walls that turn the place to clean coastal-hued canvas; and a dog-haven garden, plunge pool, and hot tub to boot.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Lightkeepers
New property arrival - Stratum
As though balanced by some meditative Cornish giant, Stratum is coastal stone stacking in architectural form; a gravity-defying home where superstructure engineering hides beneath floating staircases and metallic orb chandeliers. With its ocean-view hot tub, glass-front facade, and passage down to the surf, this is a luxury beach house where windswept hair and salty skin run amok.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Stratum
Give the gift of roaming
Sleep in heavenly peace, as only one who’s confident in their Christmas gifting can. Faithful friends and family deserve the gift of roaming; from idling over highlands to sinking into copper tubs and barefoot walks from the doors of Britain’s secret beach houses, gift vouchers are an honest offering for Unique Folk, from Unique Folk.
New property arrival - Pepper Shack
Meet Pepper Shack, a charcoal briquette that could replace the winter cave of even the most highfalutin hibernator. A soot-dark place for would-be artists in residence to write a play, compose an aria, or practice mindfulness while hot-tubbing in Jane Austen’s county.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Pepper Shack
New property arrival - White Crow Cottage
A biscuit tin cottage that sees your old-world charm and raises you poured concrete and Picassos, our newest arrival is a lesson in curveballs. Scratch past its centenarian surface and peel back its thatched roof to find staircases crafted from ribbons of oak and glass-roofed showers tucked under the eaves in a home where primo ballerino Rudolf Nureyev once holidayed.
Properties featured in this newsletter: The Dancer´s Room
A season for lovers
Oh, to retreat; what a simple way for lovers to spend a long weekend. The wind and rain´s no inconvenience to two who´d rather be locked indoors. If your romantic getaway’s been on the backburner, the time is nigh to burn the midnight oil. This month, we celebrate the season for lovers.
Haute Hibernation
Oh, to hibernate; to spend winter in a meditative state, rationing the provisions and hiding from predators. While that might be the case for the hedgehogs and dormice of the nation, we have something heartier in store. This is haute hibernation, a time for burrowing beneath quilts and warming jammy Zinfandels at the fireside.
New property arrival - Charlotte´s Folly
Once upon a time in a land not far away, a life-sized gingerbread house built for lodging Earls welcomed those in a fairytale state of mind. A Brothers Grimm hideaway that seems to sprout from the garden like a limewashed berry, Charlotte´s Folly is a terracotta trinket that tells a sweet tale of craftmanship and nostalgia.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Charlotte´s Folly
It´s time to rekindle Christmas
From Hansel and Gretel cottages to lakeside glasshouses, woodland estates to castles in private kingdoms, the homes which form our Christmas collection are something to write home about.
Properties featured in this newsletter: The Fable, Castle Trinity, Galleon, Infinity, Pearl´s Place, Sienna, Ukiyo, Viola
Unique folk
In homes that brim with folkloric influence, the spirit of these isles and the people that make them come to the fore; in all their creativity and craftsmanship. It is in such spaces, where hand-painted bowls of figs rest on driftwood tables brought in from the local beach, that we make ourselves most at home.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Sundance, Tincture, The Summer Folly, Heddwen, Little Inka
New property arrival - Pomona
1969 was one of the most culturally defining years in history. While Armstrong took man´s first steps on the moon, British artist Terence Coventry was starting out again on the south Cornwall coast. In the latest chapter of his mid-century home, sojourning families can claim it all for their own. With its kidney-shaped pool, exclusive access to the sculpture gardens and glass walls that connect those inside to nature, this seaside studio oozes artistic allure.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Pomona
New property arrival - Senara
Flamingo pink sunsets, pastries on the beach and morning dips in the ocean before even the keenest of surfers have made their way to Gwithian’s blue shores; life at Senara is an idyllic one. Inside, this contemporary beach house flaunts Scandinavian vibes and sweeping views of St Ives Bay, while the garden includes a pool, sauna and Minack-inspired fire pit area for late-night s´mores.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Senara
New property arrival - Tincture
Within the secluded peaks of the Cambrian Mountains, Tincture is a true escape into the wild. The fairytale cottage was crafted using ingenious sympathy towards the land in which it resides; off-grid and intentionally simple to frame the hills which dip in and out of sight between the elements outside.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Tincture
New property arrival - Idlewylde
As comfortable within the wilderness as the peregrine falcons who soar above it, this remote cottage is an impossibly romantic retreat for couples. Transformed from tumbledown sheep shelter to luxury cottage, Idlewylde retains much of its heritage while merging a smorgasbord of centuries, cultures and countries between its Welsh stone walls.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Idlewylde
Blue sky thinking
Symmetrical facades, dark nooks or enormous windows inviting nature´s views to flood in; the way in which we design our homes has a profound impact on both our mood and wellbeing. This month we explore the field of neuroarchitecture, taking inspiration from fellow of the American Institute of Architects, Steven Holl who said, “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.”
New property arrival - Verte
Wraparound windows peering through the oaks, an angular grass roof and organic furnishings moulded from the surrounding estate; here is a treehouse in which even the most stoic of grown-ups can lose themselves in imagination. This RIBA award-winning home is part of our limited edition collection.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Verte
New property arrival - Solas
Just a stone´s throw from the paradisiacal shores of one of the UK´s best beaches, this modern home in the Outer Hebrides is seemingly perched on the edge of the world.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Solas
Rooms in bloom
Fruiting banana trees, heritage orchards, natural swimming pools and banks of kaleidoscopic wildflowers; this month we explore some of our most exquisite gardens.
Properties featured in this newsletter: The Walled Garden, Atelier Rose
New property arrival - Gaia Farmhouse
Restored by an architect inspired by minimalist Scandinavian design, this 16th century farmhouse embraces the ebb and flow of seasonality. Green for the fells, grey for the stones and burnt umber for the bracken which covers the landscape in a fiery blanket from September until the first snow; Gaia Farmhouse sings a song of Cumbrian soul from the inside out.
A love letter to summer
The longest day of the year and the largest music event in the country have marked the beginning of summer with heatwaves and glitter, sequins and sea swims. Windows are flung open and birdsong filters into our dreams from the early hours as the sun stretches into the sky, reminding us that there is so much to love about life.
Curious country escapes
It´s true what they say, a house in the country does not make it a ´country house´ but, while the film industry has bought us the likes of Aubrey Hall and Downton Abbey of late, we have been unearthing country homes that are altogether something quite different.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Ariabelle
The wedding edit
With the grips of lockdown behind us, and outdoor weddings legalised for good, nothing is off the cards for couples getting married over the next few years and whether you´re planning a small elopement or grand country house wedding, our summer wedding roundup has it all.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Weddings at Scarlet Hall, Weddings at The Stack
A summer of poolside glamour
Name something better than floating in scintillating waters under the hot summer sun, or slipping under the cool surface of a natural pool for a moonlit dip while the rest of the world is in slumber. This month we present four paradisical destinations complete with private pools that invite you to escape the feverish heat of the city.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Sugar Ray, Rhapsody, Castle Trematonia
The gateway to summer
Here marks the gateway to summer. The beginning of al fresco dining, late-night dancing at festivals and zinging salsas created from fresh garden produce. This coming month the UK sings its finest, most vibrant song; it was the author Maud Hart Lovelace who said, "It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside."
Properties featured in this newsletter: The Limit, Wildwood Holt
Britain´s buds of May
May is the unsung hero of British springtime; reliable sunshine, blossoming cherry trees littering pavements with confetti and long evenings of barbecues and wine. With schools still in session before the Jubilee weekend and half term, May makes for the perfect time to explore the UK.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Castle on the Well
New property arrival - The Ruby Barn
A hidden gem on the edge of the Cotswolds AONB, this luxury barn conversion was designed by a celebrity stylist and fashioned with a heart full of love.
Properties featured in this newsletter: The Ruby Barn
Enchanted cottages
Concealed by scrambling roses, hidden in valleys and in woodland glades filled with birdsong, lie some of the UK´s most enchanting stone dwellings. Delve into the land of fairytales with a Unique Homestays cottage escape this summer.
Properties featured in this newsletter: The Fable, The Sorting Office
New property arrival - Bellatrix
Inspired by Kit Kemp´s fearless Firmdale Hotels, this Gothic manor house in Cornwall´s forgotten south-east corner is a family escape where the whole gang can congregate together.
New property arrival - The Glasshouse
Perched on the banks of the River Teifi on the west Wales coast, luxury retreat The Glasshouse seemingly sits between two worlds. An elemental aesthetic brings together reclaimed wood from the garden, local slate, a roaring woodburner and hot tub right on the riverbank.
Grand gatherings
The veil of hibernation is slipping from our faces as we begin to come back together to embrace, to dance, to sit around large dining tables sharing never-ending stories.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Castle Trematonia, The Lost Music Hall
New property arrival - Castle India
A wild celebration of Mother Nature, Castle India is a luxury retreat perched on the banks of the River Lynher that offers an immersive experience of botanical beauty. Inside it´s all bold prints and entertaining spaces, while outside a natural pool awaits within nine acres of sub-tropical gardens.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Castle Trematonia
Cold water therapy
Whether Britain´s cerulean seas, moorland rivers or Highland waterfalls, immersing into cold water fills the body with tingling vitality. A therapy not prescribed in doctor´s surgeries, but an age-old connection to some of our wildest landscapes, we invite you to run far from the UK´s concrete jungles to dip your toes in our effervescent shores and cascading streams.
New photoshoot locations
This month we introduce two new arrivals to our exclusive photoshoot collection. The woodland setting of In Clover will set the scene for new fashion lines, while Skyfall’s cornucopia of facilities will inspire anyone looking for a luxury country location not far from London.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Photoshoots at In Clover, Photoshoots at Skyfall
New property arrival - The Railway House
Scandinavian design and English elegance go hand in hand at The Railway House, with Turkish rugs, lofty ceilings and sculptural chandeliers creating a cosmopolitan yet cosy feel. Outside, heady herbs line the pathways while, beyond the walled garden, a river saunters through the surrounding farmland, tempting long walks alongside the resident otters and egrets.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Aria
Fantastical castles, towers and follies
This year, escape the shackles of the everyday by running away to a home where individuality, romance and frivolity are embraced.
Properties featured in this newsletter: Castle on the Well, The Summer Folly
New property arrival - Huntlington House
The former Jacobean hunting lodge, Huntlington House has put down its working boots for the last time, entering its golden years where no luxury is spared and no desire too far-fetched. Refined, elegant but with hints of playful rascality throughout, this lavish manor ensures a jolly good time.
New property arrivals - White Beach Cove, Isla Windmill and Saffron Tower
Seemingly at the ends of the Earth, between mountains and sea, this trio of unique dwellings offers sublime escapism from strident city living. Island windmill, fairytale tower or white stone cottage, which will you choose first?
Properties featured in this newsletter: Isla Windmill, White Beach Cove, Saffron Tower
2024 - 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020
