Travel: Gather round all ye revellers

If dressing up, feasting merrily and singing lusty Jacobean songs is your thing, then Sean Hardy knows where to do it

EVER felt there was something missing from the country houses of England? Ever felt you wanted more than the guided tour, the gardens and the tea shop? That you wanted to actually check in, travel back in time and have the warm hand of country-house hospitality extended to you as was intended - as a guest not as a tourist?

After all, that is what these piles were built for. The problem, (now that an Englishman's castle is as likely to be a conference centre as his home), has been getting the right blend of modern comfort and authentic period style - nobody wants chamber pots or the real smell of period living. All too many small country-house hotels opt instead for an air of Disney set-dressing - the riding boots left just by the fire where leather never should be.

Perhaps for the most fun you have to accept the drama of the idea of going back in time, suspend disbelief and relish creating your own historical reality. Certainly that is the attitude that sustains Old Colehurst manor near Market Drayton in Shropshire, where a true "17th-century experience" is promised complete with costumes, musicians, food, wine and merriment.

It is the dogged determination of the current Lord of the Manor, Scandinavian Bjorn Teksnes, that has helped resuscitate the Jacobean ruin and it is his sheer theatricality that underlies the Colehurst "experience".

Restored to a level of sumptuousness unknown in the 17th century but nevertheless in the finest traditions of country-house hotel hospitality, (en suite bathrooms, individually designed rooms), the half timbered mansion promises an authentic taste of Jacobean hospitality.

If this sends shivers down your spine as it did mine, akin to being asked on stage at the school panto (All shout "I do believe in the Fairy Queen"), fear ye not - you can opt in or out of the costumes and dancing - but you'd be a fool to refuse the food.

The entrance hall seems very much as the Barker family might have intended when they built the house in the early 1600s. A large flagstoned and panelled room with giant roaring fire, plus dogs and cats, awaits arriving guests along with mulled wine or home brewed mead.

Both Bjorn and his wife Maria are keen to show guests around and detail their travails in restoring the house over the course of the 1980s from an uninhabited ruin to its current splendour.

Only the gardens are unfinished - or at least not yet mature enough to match the house.

But the fun really starts for dinner. One attic room the size of a wardrobe is set aside through which, Narnia like, you pass to be costumed in cast- offs from the RSC. This is optional, but it's interesting to note how keen British men are to act out their Shakespearean fantasies (or in the case of one of our party, his Anne Hathaway fantasy) and how fast the ice is broken with fellow guests when you enter into a communal act of make believe - with or without period drag.

There is more mead and mulled wine to kick off downstairs, more stories from Bjorn of the Colehurst ghost and underfloor heating ("from top to bot" in his hurdy-gurdy English) before guests proceed to the serious business of the evening - the food.

Colehurst dinners are served in one of two glorious dining rooms on replicas of 17th-century crockery and pewter. I lost count of the courses - due as much to the constant refilling of my mead tankard as their actual number - all from original recipes, most made from local produce (just think of the food scene in the movie Tom Jones).

Of course all this fine living did come at a high price - the Jacobean Party Game. This involves a fine music, plus interactive jollity. If you were the one hiding behind your mother at the panto, then this is not for you.

We were taught period dances and worse still, period songs, sung as a round. Singing rounds brings out a very unpleasant streak in the English house guest - indeed it was probably this sort of musical argy-bargy that inspired the Puritans to close down the playhouses.

Centuries of English philistinism are illuminated by the horror of Jacobean song and dance and if you thought all things should be tried in life bar incest and Morris dancing, you'll be a step nearer having done everything after a weekend at Colehurst.

Fortunately mead was the dance drug of its day - you wake up having acted a complete fool but remembering little... and breakfast is mercifully sedate.

colehurst manor

fact file

Old Colehurst Manor, Colehurst, Market Drayton, Shropshire TF9 2JB, is run by Bjorn and Maria Teksnes.

Prices

B&B is from pounds 70 to pounds 175 for a double room (no single rate). The '17th century experience' (including afternoon tea and a six-course dinner with wine, plus breakfast) is pounds 230 for two people in a double room. Most rooms have four-poster beds.

Old Colehurst Manor is open all year round