In September, audiences around the world will find themselves swooning and swaying over the new, Daisy Edgar-Jones-starring adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. And not only thanks to the presence of George MacKay, Frank Dillane, and Herbert Nordrum as this film’s trio of dashing (and in some instances, dastardly) suitors to the Dashwood sisters.
The other reason they might be a little hot under the collar? The ravishing landscapes that serve as its backdrop. There are the rugged, prehistoric granite cliffs and windswept grasslands of the Dartmoor National Park, where you’ll see Edgar-Jones and her co-star, Esmé Creed-Miles, staring out across the tors, romantic turmoil roiling just behind the eyes. There are the chocolate box stone cottages and farmhouses nestled within its deep wooded valleys, one of which will stand in for the Dashwoods’ Barton Cottage; the sisters can be seen dangling on a swing there in the trailer, the honey-colored evening light draped across the hills beyond.
But even without the film’s impending release, there’s never been a better time to visit this breathtakingly beautiful corner of southwest England—arguably most famous as the birthplace of the iconic Devonshire cream tea, and as the locus for many of Agatha Christie’s most fiendish tales. For that, you can thank a new wave of forward-thinking hoteliers: at the forefront of which sit Caitlin Owens and Paul Glade of the regenerative rural escape Fowlescombe Farm, which opened its sleek, solid oak doors in May of last year.
I, however, visited Fowlescombe in December, in the depths of a Devon winter. Located in the Dartmoor foothills, some 20 minutes from the bohemian market town of Totnes, it’s reached along a series of narrow farm tracks, past a set of imposing stone gates overrun by wildflowers and accompanied by a classic keeper’s cottage. Trundling down the boggy driveway through a thickly wooded forest, without so much as an aerial mast in sight to indicate I was in the 21st century, I half-expected to see one of the Dashwood sisters flying across the path, bonnets trampled in the mud behind them.
But then, pulling up around the corner, Fowlescombe revealed itself: yes, with a perfect gabled farmhouse at its center, complete with smoke twisting up from both chimneys, but also with a striking complex of contemporary barn conversions extending out in every direction, featuring full-height glass panels and windows sliced out of the local, dark gray shillet stone. Parking by the old storehouses and wandering my way up the gravel paths—past the rambling greenhouses, where morning yoga sessions are held, and the refectory, where you can join Chef Elly Wentworth for bread making or sausage making workshops throughout the day—I was then bundled into the farmhouse for the very informal check-in process, which essentially involved being guided from the kitchen table over to one of the barns, where my “Home Barn” suite lay.
