A Georgian estate in Yorkshire
About
Two centuries of history, twenty years of quiet restoration, and a place shaped to feel like home.
Our story
Middleton Lodge is a Georgian estate of 200 acres near Richmond, in North Yorkshire.
Home to the Palladian Main House, the Coach House, Walled two-acre Garden, Dairy with its dovecot, Orchard, Forge, Forest Spa and landscape. All lovingly restored with sustainability and a love of hosting.
Chapter by chapter
A house brought back to life
The Main House
The house was finished in 1780, designed by John Carr of York and built for George Hartley, whose family made their money in local mining. It has been a family home ever since. The landscape around it was completed at the same time.
it was completed at the same time. A working estate
Leonard Hartley turned Middleton Lodge into a working farm and country estate in the early nineteenth century, and it stayed that way for a century more. By the late 1800s the main house was being let to local families, among them the Backhouses and the Peases.
The Allison family
The Allison family bought Middleton Lodge in 1980 and have been restoring it ever since, building by building. They still own the estate today. The Main House was the first to come back, reopening for exclusive use in 2005 after decades as a private home. It is still lived in and is available to take over exclusively for a wedding or gathering. The Coach House followed in 2014, with bedrooms and a restaurant. Bedrooms now run across the Georgian buildings, the farmhouses and the old working spaces, each shaped by whatever it used to be.
What is is now
Prue, James's mother, used to host afternoon tea in the family home, and it became something of an institution locally. The house was always full. It was the people, the dinners and the gatherings that made it a home rather than a house, and that is what James set out to restore.
James Allison
The estate is still growing, still opening up new spaces, with guests at the centre of it and a love of the landscape driving how we build and how we grow. Old and new, brought together carefully. There is no set way to spend your time here. You might walk the grounds, spend the afternoon at the spa, or find yourself in the Coach House longer than you planned. Food sits at the centre of it. Both restaurants follow an estate-to-plate approach, guided by what is growing here and by the season. We hope you feel at home.
Long-term care of the land
Sustainability, quietly
Sustainability has run through the restoration from the start, and now shapes how the land is managed, how produce is grown and how the estate operates day to day. The aim throughout is self-sufficiency. The walled garden supplies both kitchens, with greenhouses and raised beds added since to extend the growing season and widen the range. Gardeners and chefs plan the crops together, so what goes in the ground is decided by what the kitchens intend to cook months later. Mushrooms are cultivated in the woodland, sap is harvested from the birch trees, and beehives in the orchard support pollination and supply honey. In months of abundance the on-site larder is used to pickle, preserve and ferment, so summer produce carries through to winter.
Our love of hosting is what means most to us. This has always been a house full of people, and everything we have built since has come from wanting to keep it that way.
