Steeped in the charm of Shakespeare’s county, the award-winning Mallory Court whets the appetite with a food-forward rural reset.
SAVOURING AUTUMN’S BOUNTY AT MALLORY COURT
Rarely, the first thing I do upon arriving at a luxury hotel is don a pair of overalls and get ready to work. But I have a date with a beekeeper that simply can’t be missed.
Nestled in the countryside surrounding the picturesque Warwickshire market town of Leamington Spa, the stately Mallory Court Hotel is the only luxury boutique hotel I have encountered that boasts its own ‘resident beekeeper’.
Lottie Buckland has been keeping her bees here for the past three years, and it’s a win-win situation all round for guests, who can choose to book a beekeeping experience, for the hotel itself, with a constant supply of ambrosial honey straight from the garden, and for the bees themselves, who get to gorge on all 10-acres of the hotel’s beautifully varied grounds.
To spend an hour with the bees is an unexpectedly mindful and immersive experience. It begins with a honey tasting, followed by an inspection of the three colonies, checking on the bees, their honey, and searching for a healthy queen amidst the teeming throngs.
We come away with our own freshly cut chunk of comb honey, sampling some of the final efforts of this season’s worker bees as their frenzied, six-week life span sadly draws to a close with the arrival of autumn.
Having witnessed the toil that goes into a single teaspoon’s worth, we savour every drop, and with thankfully no stings to report, it is an experience I would recommend to anyone fortunate enough to spend a night at Mallory Court.
GOOD MANORS
Lottie and her bees are just one of the ways in which this hotel and its laudable sustainability efforts stand apart, as witnessed by its Green Tourism Gold Certification.
Centred around a magnificent Lutyens-style manor house, Mallory Court Hotel & Spa is part of the Eden Hotel Collection, whose portfolio of boutique properties also includes Cheltenham’s The Greenway, The Arden Hotel in nearby Stratford-upon-Avon, and the breathtaking Bovey Castle in Devon, to name just a few.
Earlier this year, the Mallory Court team had reason to rejoice as the hotel took Gold for Large Hotel of the Year at the VisitEngland Awards for Excellence 2025, making this officially the Best Large Hotel in England.
Behind this tremendous accolade is the hotel’s recently refurbished interiors and the tranquil grounds that bear fruit to an unforgettable garden-to-plate dining experience and sensory walking trails.
Having sang for our supper, the real task of the day was to sample the hotel’s fine-dining restaurant, The Warwick, which has been given a new lease of life under the expert hands of Stu Deeley.
His face may strike you as familiar, having won first place at MasterChef: The Professionals in 2019. He has since taken the helm of well-reputed kitchens, including Hampton Manor’s Smoke and Michelin-starred Simpsons.
If the house alone wasn’t impressive enough, the gardens at Mallory Court are sure to flaw you. Designed in 1914 by Percy Morley Hoarder to complement the romantic vernacular Elizabethan style of the main house, they are the hotel’s crowning glory – a combination of formal, manicured spaces perfect for lazy, mindful wanderings, and areas where nature has been left to work her magic, allowing the bees and other wildlife to thrive.
GARDEN OF PLENTY
The jewel in the crown is the kitchen garden. Here, under Stu’s guidance, the kitchen collaborates closely with Estates Manager, Chris Holdsworth, to maximise the use of produce.
Leveraging his green-thumbed expertise, Chris ensures a constant supply of flavour, freshness, and vibrancy to the restaurant’s offerings.
We have an uninterrupted view of the gardens from the quaint, mullioned windows of our breathtaking Snowshill suite (each room being named after a different National Trust site), and decide to set the tone before dinner with a stroll.
Alongside thriving herbaceous borders, we are met with a bounty of autumnal produce, as verdant artichokes sprout from the soil and the sweet scent of apples carries on the air.
Elsewhere, there is evidence of plum trees, strawberries, raspberries, courgettes, and we encounter a slightly riotous blackberry hedge that has apparently been left to its own fruitful devices at the insistence of the chef.
Poking our heads inside a neighbouring polytunnel, we are overwhelmed by the scents of rose geranium and lemon verbena.
Afterwards, there is no better place to enjoy an al fresco aperitif in the early autumn sunshine than the terrace overlooking the sunken garden.
In homage to our beekeeping experience and the surrounding grounds, I pick the signature Mallory Court Spritz – a delicious, refreshing combination of gin, Prosecco, soda, lemon, and the hotel’s own lemon verbena and honey.
DUSK DELIGHTS
For Birmingham-born Stu, taking the helm of The Warwick is a welcome return, having cut his teeth in the kitchens here when his career was just beginning.
He’s now helping other chefs to do the same, offering training and placements to the next generation via the Stu Deeley Professional Chef Academy.
In his showcase ‘Taste the Season’ menu, you can taste the warm familiarity of a homecoming, with comforting classics served with fine-dining twists.
I smile at the option of baked Alaska for pudding on the à la carte menu, but cannot resist the call of the chocolate fondant beautifully contrasted with ice cream flavoured with mint straight from the garden that comes with the set courses.
The dining room’s ambience is hushed but comfortable; well-dressed couples sharing special occasions flanked by staff that make you feel like royalty sat within the historic, dimly lit, wood-pannelled room.
In quiet comfort, we sample a combination of flavours near and far; deliciously crispy morsels of Stornoway black pudding paired with buttery Cornish monkfish, chargrilled tenderstem broccoli, and doused in a spoonful of Thai green curry that lends a surprising but entirely welcome heat.
I detect a hint of Mallory honey at the base of a canape, beneath a bite-sized tower of goat’s cheese and fennel jam encased in a black cracker shell – the smallest mouthfuls often leaving the largest, lasting impressions.
The taste of autumn is encapsulated with a starter of burrata with pea and mint gazpacho. The peas are explosions of freshness, straight out of the pod, and pair perfectly with the deliciously salty Jerusalem artichoke I recognise from the gardens earlier.
It is delicate, clean and light, veering away from the stodginess that can overtake menus as soon as an autumn chill descends.
The artichoke makes a welcome reappearance with a main of beautifully bloody beef rump cap, served with melt-in-your-mouth ox cheek and pickled pear. An unexpected highlight is the crispy Burford Brown egg, served with barbecued leek and a warm tartare sauce, its yolk a searing blaze across the plate.
Throughout, standout staff take the dining experience above and beyond, from excellent wine recommendations (we can vouch for the Lady A Provence Rose – if it’s good enough for Soho House, it’s good enough for us) to friendly chatter in between courses.
My only regret is not having booked our table slightly earlier – although service flows seamlessly throughout, with a well-paced and comfortably proportioned series of plates, five courses (excluding the canapes, amuse bouche and bread course – a triumph in itself) rightfully take time.
Having started at 7:45pm, midnight is within reaching distance by the time we have polished our final nightcap. We return to our room, sinking into a lap of luxury surrounded by plush furnishings, an immaculate tiled en suite with luxurious TempleSpa products, and velvet headboards above a mammoth-sized bed.
For a countryside reset and a food-forward escape, Mallory Court is a destination not to be missed. On leaving the following morning, I take a couple of seed sachets placed by the front door – wildflowers and parsley – a final gift from the gardens and something of Mallory to take home and plant for myself.
