A luxury country house retreat in Croydon. Yes, Croydon

What’s the buzz Croydon is known for flyovers, high-rise office blocks and the big Ikea with its landmark former power-station chimneys. It’s known for providing drab south London backdrops for Peep Show and Kate Moss’s childhood (she didn’t stick around).

Croydon is not known for its destination hotels. 

Now there is the Birch, which opened earlier this summer within a neo-gothic mansion in Selsdon, in Croydon’s sprawling southern suburbs (Croydon is a borough as well as a big town).

Birch Selsdon is a sister to Birch Cheshunt, a hotel and members’ club that opened in Hertfordshire, north of the capital, in 2020. It injected a pared-back urban cool into the country-house hotel market, with an appeal to millennial creatives and knackered parents who might not have the cash or patience to drive to, say, Soho Farmhouse.

In the glazed side returns, artisanal bakery queues and taprooms of south London and beyond, people are starting to talk about the newer place. In my experience, these conversations tend to end with the question: “Sounds great, but is it really in Croydon?”

Location Location Location It takes me 35 minutes to drive to the Birch from East Dulwich, not far from where I grew up. (I remember as a teenager buying ill-fitting jeans in Croydon’s Whitgift shopping centre.) East Croydon, which is a 10-minute taxi ride away, has direct trains from London Bridge and Victoria (15 minutes) or St Pancras (25 minutes).

I approach via suburban streets and supermarkets. Yet to step through the hotel on to its vast terrace is to be teleported to, I don’t know, deepest Somerset. More than 200 acres of parkland and a former golf course roll into the distance. The 150-acre Kings Wood beyond it meets the horizon, further belying the hotel’s position in London.

The oldest bits of the house date to the early 19th century and were built for George Smith, a politician, banking heir and director of the East India Company. Later owned by a bishop, a publisher and a brewer, it became a hotel in 1925 and gained new wings and the golf course. It was most recently operated as a conference hotel by De Vere.

Checking in With its rattan chairs, terracotta tiles and sectional sofas in moss green velvet, the stone-walled grand lobby sets the tone for the new place, which is largely the work of London-based interior design studio A-nrd. It’s a light-touch glow-up, which started with the stripping back of thick carpets, ceiling tiles and gallons of magnolia. 

The walls are now painted in apricots, sage greens and indigo blues. Original wood panelling, parquet, stained glass and bas-relief plaster ceilings have been spruced up but only a little, the slightly shabby vibe nicely complementing the limewash tones and a forest of giant palms and figs. 

The 181 bedrooms continue the theme, with sisal rugs, wicker floor lamps and linen curtains. There are no TVs or phones, while rooms in the “family wing” — a less appealing 1980s affair with its own shared garden — have fun, curtained-off timber bunk beds.

Birch is also targeting post-pandemic flexi-workers with a membership model that includes access to a huge gym and Hive, a snazzy co-working space with hot desks and Zoom booths. Due to open in August is a new 25m outdoor pool conceived as a mid-century Miami lido. It’s all eminently Instagrammable stuff, but the vast scale and grandeur of the building and grounds are allowed to breathe so that nothing feels overcooked.

What to do An eclectic roster of events and classes for members and guests includes pottery lessons, beekeeping experiences, ecology walks and spoon whittling workshops. The Birchlings kids’ club occupies the old golf shop. There are three-hour sessions for the under-12s (£30 each), during which parents are invited to work at Hive or sit on the terrace with a drink.

Golf is not an option, though walking the old course is very much encouraged. After a century of intensive mowing, the estate is being allowed to rewild, with light grazing, two years after the final putt. Yorkshire fog grass creates a shimmering purple haze, while maples, ash and oaks are taking root. There are bright pink pyramidal orchids and yellow lady’s bedstraw. It’s hoped that nightingales may soon also return. The effect is already startling, and the view from the terrace, framed by grand cedars and firs, is more captivating than anything more formal gardens could achieve.

Beyond the hotel grounds there is, well, Croydon, which to be fair has evolved since I was a boy, and is London’s borough of culture for 2023, with a calendar of exhibitions and performances (see culturecroydon.com). To the south lie the Surrey Hills and the chalk-and-grass expanse of the North Downs.

What about the food? Lee Westcott, formerly of Typing Room in Bethnal Green and then Pensons in Worcestershire when it won a Michelin star, oversees the cooking at the all-day Vervain brasserie (think hispi cabbage and cured trout) and Elodie, which has a £69 tasting menu that is as subtly appetising as the decor. Both restaurants are excellent and benefit from sweeping views of the grounds through leaded windows.

At Elodie, Michael Wilson, the young barman, serves me a faintly herbaceous pineapple weed gimlet using flowers from the old golf course. Later, he pairs a dish of grilled courgettes with gooseberry and sorrel with a glass of organic Cirò Bianco, which he says has “notes of Haribo Tangfastics — perfect for the kids”. This strikes me as funny, weirdly accurate, and — most tellingly — not remotely the kind of thing a sommelier might have said during this Croydon pile’s century-long incarnation as a hotel.

Other guests? Mostly youngish Londoners in expensive trainers, either en famille or sans famille and gathered in sight of the bar.

The damage Rooms start at £140, while club membership for the over thirties is £150 a month with a £300 joining fee, including the gym, workspace and various hotel discounts.

Elevator pitch A country club for south London millennials.

Simon Usborne was a guest of Birch Selsdon (birchcommunity.com)

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Letter in response to this article:

Recalling Thatcherism’s links to a Croydon hotel / From John Coen, London SM2, UK