In spring I received an invitation to a pop-up hotel. Secret supper clubs and pop-up restaurants are au courant, I know, but isn't a pop-up hotel simply a yurt? The nature of pop-up is "now-you-see-it, now-you-don't", so by the time I read the email from someone called Samantha at Dewsall Court (coat of arms, smart website, not a yurt in sight), it's all over. I must wait until the next time they open to guests – which is during the Hay Festival. They have a lovely room free. Am I coming?
A track passes farm buildings, leads to a drive, skirts the soaring sandstone walls of 17th-century Dewsall Court and delivers me at a kitchen terrace arranged around an old yew tree. From the kitchen door, the garden rolls away to a barn, a pond and a tiny church. Lupins, foxgloves and poppies crowd deep borders. Roses ramble, birds sing.
I am swept into the house by Joseph Robinson, Samantha's brother. Then Julian Vaughan, Samantha's husband, appears, and here's Samantha herself and her mother, Jane. Hotel or houseparty? I'll venture, a bit of both.
Joseph shows me around (other guests are either at book events or en route from London). Dewsall Court is so large that by the time we've toured study, billiard room, chinoiserie room, conservatory, endless bedrooms (then two mod-minimal cottages in the grounds), I can't remember how to get back to mine. "Chateau" is one of the two smallest bedrooms, but has its own bathroom with slipper bath, big Aromatherapy Associates bottles and creeper-clad window.
Downstairs in the hall (which is really the drawing room) I recline against cushions on a fat linen sofa beside a huge arrangement of peonies until I'm called for dinner. Know what? This is heaven.
So what's the story? The Robinsons bought this house (which latterly had been owned by a London hospital, and Sir Charles Clore), in the late 1980s, when it was in a very sorry state indeed, restored it and became the first owners to occupy it since the reign of Queen Anne. Sadly, three years ago Samantha and Joseph's father, Joe, died and so their widowed mother, Jane, needed a plan for Dewsall Court.
"It has always been a lively house," she tells me over tea in the vast kitchen, "full of people." So the decision was made to keep it that way by creating a pop-up hotel – a manageably infrequent entrée into providing accommodation – during local events. One of which, of course, is the Hay Festival of Literature.
It helps that the family are natural-born hosts, but when the public comes to stay you not only need masses of bathrooms but fire safety stuff. It's an expensive business in an old building – but they went for it.
If irregular opening means they never get the practice professionals do, it all adds to the relaxed, help-yourself house-guest vibe. However, meals are the achilles heel. When rooms cost upwards of £200 (as some do), expectation levels rise. Breakfast in the sunny caress of the conservatory – amid festival-goers down from London, exclaiming over yellow egg yolks and undisturbed sleep – really ought to be accompanied by a menu, and to my certain knowledge, there are two Herefordshire B&Bs offering dinners of infinitely more exceptional nature than "duck and green peas".
When Dewsall Court gets that right, whether you call it part-time hotel, instant B&B or pop-up piece of heaven, it will totally rock.
• 01432 276724, dewsall.com). Next pop-up dates are Abergavenny Food Festival, 16-19 September, and Bonfire Night, 4-7 November. Double rooms from £90 including continental breakfast. Cooked breakfast, £10. Pre-booked dinner from £40
sally.shalam@theguardian.com
