The Collective is a curious bubble of sophistication that’s somehow materialised in Woolsery, a modest, back-of-beyond village outside Barnstaple in north Devon. The tech millionaire Michael Birch has a deep affection for the place after spending childhood summers here and in 2015 he bought the local pub and hatched a rose-tinted plan to resuscitate village life. He and his wife, Xochi, have since carefully renovated the shop, its chippy, created a regenerative farm and won Michelin’s approval for the pub’s food. Finally, in a handful of village buildings, they’ve added accommodation that wouldn’t look out of place in Mayfair. Except when you step outside these boutique bedrooms, the pristine wilderness of the Hartland peninsula awaits.
Overall score 9/10
Main photo: The Collective at Woolsery
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Rooms and suites
Score 9/10
There are two bedrooms and two suites for two people each, and three cottages that sleep up to eight, all furnished with stealth-wealth sensitivity and within a hop and skip of the couple’s sister pub, the Farmers Arms. As soon as you check in, you can feel that this is a passion project rather than a business proposition. Interiors are discreet but lavished with top-quality fabrics, fixtures and furnishings and awesome attention to detail, so staircases have spindles made from leather and the well in the floor of one cottage sitting room has been showcased with a glass cover. Some have an easy art-deco vibe; others have more of a 1940s feel and bags have Instagram glam with features such as a buttercup-yellow freestanding bathtub. Others have extravagant wallpapers, exposed stone walls and wood-burning stoves in the bedrooms to crank up the romance factor.
Food and drink
Score 9/10
Lunches and dinners are served at the Farmers Arms, which has been reimagined as a hygge hideaway with interiors as stripped back as the menu. The look doesn’t quite work in the bar, which feels a little cold and unwelcoming, but the dining rooms are a minimalist masterclass: impressive French oak windows and exposed frames, spindle-back chairs mixed with banquette seats, muted colours and mounted antlers on the cream walls, all warmed up by blazing fires. The food is imaginative, full of flavour and hyper local, with plenty of ingredients coming from the Collective’s own Birch Farm, a few minutes’ walk away. The chicken liver parfait with crab apple jam was rich and rustic and the potato and allium stew, laced with wickedly rich Keltic Gold cheese balanced by fermented celeriac, is the perfect reward after a wind-whipped and lung-busting walk along the north Devon coastline.
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Breakfast is extra (£15) but equally inventive and delivered in a picnic hamper to your room. The sweet clover and vanilla yoghurt with rhubarb jam and toasted sunflower seeds was light and subtle, while the Birch Farm black hog’s pudding with smoky beans and quince brown sauce was in-your-face gutsy. Two regrets: we didn’t have time to try the fish and chips or the Sunday roast, which is booked up six weeks in advance by appreciative locals.
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What else is there?
Score 6/10
You can tour the 150-acre Birch Farm with affable Josh Sparkes, the head gardener, and learn about regenerative farming practices, edible forests and Japanese natural farming and composting methods; even if you haven’t a single green finger it’s fascinating. There are plans for horticultural and cookery workshops but there’s no spa so you’ll have to get your wellness hit from the great outdoors.
Where is it?
Score 9/10
Woolsery, which is also called Woolfardisworthy, isn’t particularly inspiring, but the nearby Hartland peninsula is an enigmatic triangle of wilderness between Bude and Bideford with a wreckers’ coastline, bashed by Atlantic rollers and blessed by secluded beaches. You’ll spot peregrine falcons, oystercatchers and cormorants and have your pick of mossy picnic spots in its steep oakwood valleys.
Susan d’Arcy was a guest of the Collective at Woolsery
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Price room-only doubles from £275
Restaurant mains from £16
Family-friendly Y
Dog-friendly Y
Accessible N
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