"In 1905 Frank Cook, grandson of the celebrated travel agent, purchased a hilltop in Surrey with the intention of building himself a fine house.

Frank was the oldest son of Thomas Mason Cook who had expanded the original Cook temperance travel business to promote middle-class tourism to the Middle East. So influential was Thomas Mason Cook that he was described as “the second-greatest man in Egypt” after the Khedive.

Tragically while arranging for the German Emperor Wilhelm II to visit Palestine in 1898, Thomas Mason Cook contracted dysentery and died. So it was left to Frank and his two brothers to out-earn their father and famous grandfather during great Edwardian travel boom. It was during this prosperous time that Frank Cook built himself a modern country house near Guildford. It stood on the top of Barnett Hill above the village of Blackheath. This was to be a spacious Queen Anne style house with a hallway and staircase whose ornate ceilings still impress today.

The creation of this 26 acre estate cost Frank Cook £35,000, a substantial fortune, although at the same time Sir Julius Drewe, founder of the Home & Colonial Stores was spending even more money - £50,000 - building himself a 20th century castle in Devon – and the W H Smith family of newsagent fame were building Bovey Castle on the other side of Dartmoor.

All these projects were on an impressive scale. Frank’s grounds were so extensive that a team of 14 was required to maintain them. In 1928 Thomas Cook & Son sold their business two years later to the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (Orient Express). Frank died three years later, a millionaire.

As so often happened in the 20th century, Barnet Hill enjoyed mixed fortunes once its founder had passed away. After the outbreak of World War II, his American widow donated their home to the Red Cross who cared for bomb blast victims in its grounds. Then in 1944 it became a Red Cross training centre. In the 1970s its use lapsed before it was recently taken up by Utopia Leisure who have preserved the old public areas while creating a sequence of cool-hued modern bedrooms on the first floor.

The dark-panelled dining room is a calm and charming place to spend an evening and the grounds, laid out in a series of terraces and walled lawns, are very restful too.

There’s even a delightful ornate brick-built gazebo where up to four people can dine or two can have a romantic tryst. Lovers of one of Britain’s finest gins may also be pleased to know that Silent Pool is just nine miles away. It’s a surprisingly understated distillery for such an impressive gin. And there really is a silent pool next door."

"Barnett Hill is the latest hotel aquisition by the stylish south east England Alexander Group. The hotel is housed inside an Grade II-listed building in the “Carolean” (King Charles) style by eminent Edwardian architect, Arnold Bidlake Mitchell.

Reopened by Alexander in 2017, Barnett Hill Hotel received four AA stars for its Oak Room Restaurant. Subsequently eighteen newly-renovated bedrooms in the main house were unveiled, including two master suites and two suites with in-room bath tubs from which you can enjoy sensuous views of the Surrey Hills.

In 2018 Barnett Hill will complete work on its courtyard bedrooms and the extravagant Utopia Spa which is a feature of all Alexander hotels."