My iPhone has been slowing down for some time. I’ve been due an upgrade since September, but the the idea of admin makes me feel unwell. Still, recent developments have transpired to change my mind. Most pertinent is that my battery now lasts only matter of hours, as I found out while driving to Hampton Manor in Warwickshire.
It was about 4pm on a Thursday evening that I set off, thereby avoiding the most jagged edges of traffic, and Google Maps — I have stopped using Waze since it told me about a dead deer on the side of the A303 but failed to inform me of a two-hour backlog on the M3 — had my journey clear and blue, and a little over two hours.
Then my phone went kaput just past Banbury and I became lost. My charger, you see, wasn’t working. I soldiered on for a while, directionless, trundling up the M40 in hope a Negroni might find its way into my mouth soon enough. But to find Hampton Manor, a striking estate folded into the fields between Birmingham and Coventry, without modern technology? Sorry, but the Duke of Edinburgh award passed me by all those years ago. I had to stop at a service station to find a solution. Thankfully, there was a wireless charging pad on a slot machine in one of those dinky fake casinos behind the glass screens. Capitalism is a cruel mistress, but a funny one.
And so, naturally, I was late to dinner. No matter, Hampton Manor staff laughed and found me a phone charger that worked. Then an extremely cold beer arrived while I showered in a princess tower, turrets and all. Sir Frederick Peel — the second (liberal) son of Tory prime minister Robert — did a good job building this stately home in 1852. It is grand, sweeping, but cosy. Today there are billiards and a shuffleboard, record players, a fire-lit cocktail bar, walled gardens to walk about in.
Food lovers might have heard of Grace & Savour, Hampton Manor’s flagship restaurant. It’s a tasting menu-clad, Michelin starred space which replaced Peel’s in 2022. I dove into Smoke instead, a more casual fixture in a barn-like building behind a hedge. It is run by Stuart Deeley, winner of MasterChef: The Professionals in 2019.
His was the sort of roaring food suited to assuaging a laborious journey; to dim any recognition of a similarly taxing one the next day. Crab XO in crisp tacos made for a fruitful beginning, later Berkswell cheese tartlets and fine sourdough bread, these washed down with several glasses of a South African wine called El Bandito (stay with me) that is made by a producer called Lekker, is natural (again, remain), and only arrives by way of magnums (there we are). It was the perfect expression of an inelegant, flustered evening soothed by design: a seaside wine, salty, fruit-forward, one that can and should be guzzled. It was among a number of fine drinks, whether wine — from Chin Chin and beyond — or cocktails.
Later came a burrata; I was in Middle England after all. It arrived like a sacrifice betwixt five golden beetroots, breadcrumbs and crostini for crunch. Later, an aged steak tartare gilded to the hilt with red pepper and pine nuts, before two scallops bouncing in a fragrant, spiced foam and next to umami-cracked mushrooms and dainty sheets of Iberico ham, dried roe on top of each shellfish a delicately presented masterstroke. Cornish lamb rump propped up by artichokes, broad beans and ewe’s curd harked back to Deeley’s early days on MasterChef.
I didn’t get lost on my way back to the manor, a short, leafy walk past all those turrets, wherein I settled down with a digestif, put a record on and hit the games room. I enjoy these modern escapes thrust loudly into old homes. Wood panelling suits silliness, it always has, and anyone who believes these grand houses to be formal settings don’t visit them enough.
The drive home, a little less arduous, not least after an enormous omelette, three sausages and what I like to call “breakfast buffet juice roulette”. The real indicator is would I do it again? Yes. And not just because I know my way now and have no need for a working iPhone.
