Rooms range from one to three bedroom self-catering units and are named after spots nearby: Silbury Hill, Long Barrow, Windmill Hill, Longstones, Swallowhead and Greyweathers. Each one has been given a distinct character rather than a house style. We loved the plaster-pink bathroom in Long Barrow, which we stayed in, and the king-sized bed, which we found up steep steps on a separate floor to the girls’ twin room downstairs. Friends we were travelling with (and this is where the farm really comes into its own – it is perfect for groups who want separate lodgings) were in Greyweathers. My kids envied the climbing wall that lead up to a bunk bed in a mezzanine above the lounge.
But climbing walls aside, children rarely get excited about interior design. Instead, hidden extras that Alice, a mother of three daughters works into every aspect of the farm. There’s a wooden playground in the orchard, guarded by Samuel the sheep (“just push him out the way if he’s a nuisance,” were the instructions). Then there’s a barn filled with toys ranging from a bouncy castle to ride-on diggers and bikes of all sizes, a table football machine and ping pong table. There’s also a supply of craft materials sourced from the Wiltshire Scrap Store, a reuse project that takes offcuts and end-of-line stock that would otherwise be waste.
The Granary is the on-site cinema room filled with beanbags where Alice and Rob’s own children can often be found, eager to host and meet new friends during the holidays. That would have been enough, but Alice is full of surprises that are beautifully linked to the rhythm of a working farm. When we visited, there was a lamb in the farmhouse kitchen that she let visiting children bottle feed; there were piglets in the barn who “needed” morning attention from eager little helpers, and on Saturday afternoon, as we were sitting out in the courtyard, Alice came past with a couple of ponies, asking my girls if they wanted to help groom (they did).
She also arranged a tractor ride to the top of West Kennet Long Barrow, a 5,000-year-old chambered tomb you can walk into, before taking us down to a nearby pumpkin farm to pick our own. If you need even more entertainment, Mud and Guts, a Wiltshire outfit running den-building and outdoor sessions, can be booked to come to the farm to run sessions for the children from £25h/pp (min group size 6).