The Salwey Lodge has been featured in national newspaper and magazine articles and directory listings celebrating sustainable travel, slow tourism, and the very best of the British countryside. Click on any one to read it. Where an article is behind a paywall, we have summarised it for you below.
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Some of the publications that have featured Salwey Lodge require a subscription to read in full. We have summarised those articles here so you can enjoy them regardless.
The Telegraph · Travel · Summer 2025
What’s cooler than staying in a stately home? Especially one with its own Georgian plunge pool. Salwey Lodge, near Ludlow, was built in the 1740s and has remained in the Salwey family ever since. Now it welcomes guests. Sleep in one of the four elegant bedrooms, share field-to-fork feasts in the dining room, explore the extensive grounds and dip in the 18th-century baths. There are also wonderful walks from the door, including into Mortimer Forest, a 1,000-hectare green space, perfect for forest bathing in the shade.
This is our summary of The Telegraph’s feature on Salwey Lodge. For the full original version and complete interview, please read on The Telegraph website.
Every June, the village of Richards Castle near Ludlow stages its soapbox derby, with homemade carts racing down Hanway Common and the whole community turning out to support local charities. For Arabella Salwey, who has lived at nearby Salwey Lodge since 2008, it is one of the joys of life in this part of Shropshire.
It was not, however, the life she always expected. Arabella grew up near Newbury, lost her mother while still a teenager, and went on to Cambridge only weeks later to read classics. After university she trained in private client law, work she enjoyed, though the demands were considerable. By the late 1990s, long hours and personal loss had made her wonder whether that was the future she wanted.
She and Hugo Salwey married in 2001 and left soon afterwards for Australia, where Hugo worked in shipping. The years away gave them a chance to be simply Hugo and Arabella before returning to the family world of Salwey Lodge.That world has deep roots. Hugo’s family history stretches back centuries, and the Salweys have been in Shropshire since the 1640s. The Lodge itself is full of the accumulated evidence of generations: family possessions, inherited stories and what Arabella describes as the sort of clutter that comes when no one has ever truly moved out.
The house was in good order when they arrived, thanks to work done by Hugo’s parents, but running an old country house still brought its share of practical realities. The old heating system, which involved chopping and drying wood before coaxing heat into the house, required no small amount of planning. A woodchip boiler has since made life much more comfortable.
For sixteen years, Salwey Lodge was simply home to Arabella, Hugo and their three children. Then, last spring, Arabella opened the house as a base for walking holidays. Sleeping up to eight guests, it now offers tailor-made routes, activities and food cooked by Arabella herself. The decision has brought an unexpected pleasure. The house, once something that constantly needed to be looked after, has begun to work in a different way. It gives something back — not only to Arabella, but to the people who come to stay.
Those guests often arrive looking tired and worn out by busy lives. After a few days at Salwey Lodge, walking in the countryside, eating well and slowing down, they visibly change. Shoulders drop, cheeks regain colour and the pace of the place begins to take effect. The food is part of that care. Arabella has always kept a vegetable garden, but it has taken on new meaning now that guests are there to enjoy what it produces. Beans, potatoes and other seasonal ingredients come from close to the house, while the beef served has travelled only a few miles. Although Arabella was initially daunted by cooking for guests, she is not trying to recreate the restaurants they might visit in London, Oxford or Bath. What she offers is nourishing, generous food, rooted in the garden, the farm and the surrounding countryside.
The quiet matters too. Salwey Lodge is an hour from the motorway and away from flight paths, giving it a rare stillness. Ludlow, with its castle, church and long history, lies nearby; beautiful and much admired, though not without the challenges faced by many rural communities. Arabella supports local people and businesses wherever she can. Flowers, food and demonstrations for guests all draw on the skills of those nearby, making the retreat feel closely connected to the place around it.
There is a practical reason for the venture as well as an emotional one. Farming offers little certainty, and the family need more of the estate’s assets to earn their keep if they are to remain there. Opening the house is one way of making that possible. Alongside Salwey Lodge, Arabella is involved in education and charitable work, including the Foundation of Ludlow Sixth Form College and foundations supporting communities facing deprivation. Her own early experience of grief has left her with a resilient view of life, and a belief that adversity, however hard, can shape what comes next.
In opening Salwey Lodge, Arabella has found a way to share the house rather than keep it to herself. It remains a family home, but now it is also a place where guests can arrive depleted, walk, eat, rest — and leave restored.
