How it used to be Jeremy Seal and his family discovered the old-fashioned delights of Dorset’s coast while staying at the child-friendly Knoll House Hotel Sunday Telegraph, 19/8/2001
I remembered Studland Bay as a distant passing landmark from childhood yachting holidays; an ivory crescent of sand scored between the entrance to Poole Harbour and the chalk rocks of Old Harry and famed (among us children) for its naturists' beach. Twenty years on, however, I had two girls, aged three and two months - a tad too young to appreciate sailing - and a dog quite without sealegs. The seafarer's view of Studland was no longer on; it was high time I finally set foot in this bucolic slice of Dorset.
We drove south through late-summer clouds so low and damp that they pillowed the car bonnet. But they had lifted by Wareham, leaving the Isle of Purbeck's heaths and wheat fields to steam in the sunshine. We drove through Studland village, fixed in benevolent National Trust aspic, and followed the coast road to the Knoll House Hotel. Backseat squeals of delight greeted the huge pirate ship stranded in an impressive children's playground at the top of the drive.
This particularly visible playground must rank high among unsubtle hints - in this case, that the child-hostile have come to the wrong place. The venerable Knoll House has so long championed a distinctive brand of British family holiday - children and dogs very much included - that it has since become synonymous with Studland. The timewarp surroundings and a decor which one might kindly describe as heroically resistant to fad, not to mention the delightfully idiosyncratic but impeccably attentive practices of the staff, simultaneously evoke elements of institutions as diverse as boarding school and Butlin's, the pre-war French Riviera, P.G. Wodehouse and Eastern European health spas.
Knoll House dates from the 1930s and, with its pebble-dashed walls and those dated rooms, looks like it. But it also has indoor and outdoor pools, and numerous lounges devoted to the various elements of its surprisingly wide-ranging constituency; reading rooms and a bar for adults, a games rooms for teenagers and a playroom for young children. The place thrives on its proven eccentric formula, with many devotees returning each year. Its benevolent regime particularly appeals to extended families. 'Last year there were four generations from the same family staying here together,' a grandmother told me. I spoke to her in the children's dining room, or cdr in Knollspeak, where she was watching over two grandchildren at lunchtime.
All children under five eat in the cdr where the typical menus - fishpie and icecream at lunchtime; chicken nuggets and chips followed by chocolate cup cakes for high tea - provided our eldest, Anna, with the food of her dreams. After lunch, we walked to the beach through the splendid grounds - gardens of pine trees, expanses of heather heath, and paddocks closely cropped with suitably regulation hair cuts. Predictably enough, there were no jet skis nor banana boats here but a few sedate canoes for hire. A boy lay entombed in sand, with only his neck showing, until his teasing sister waved her icecream past his outstretched tongue one time too many, and he broke free to wrest the icecream from her. Even the view here seemed from another time; a comfortingly naive tableau of yellow sailing yachts with bright white sails pasted all over a blue sea, the stained-white chalk stacks of Old Harry fronting a headland of golden wheat, and the beachhuts at our back, neatly arranged in tiny terraces, where old couples sat out on deckchairs while tea brewed on small shiny stoves.
In the evening, a babysitter supplemented the hotel's renowned listening service whereby housekeepers are stationed on every landing from 7.30 to 11, which allowed my wife and I to effect a blissful escape. We took the air before dinner, walking through the deep woods at the back of the hotel which gave on to heathland, all purple heathers and yellow gorse. From Agglestone Rock, a much climbed and initialled monolith of red sandstone, we had excellent views of Poole Harbour.
After breakfast - a typically brisk affair served from 8.00 to 8.45 - Anna disappeared into the children's playroom. It might have proved hard to extricate her from that paradise of books, games and cartoons on the telly, except that no child was about to contest that morning's outing. Corfe Castle, with its great grey bastions and magnificent outlooks, and the adjacent steam train to Swanage might have been specially devised as child-friendly adjuncts to the Knoll House experience. After visiting the castle, we ducked into Corfe's town museum which was displayed in England's smallest town hall. The highlight among the exhibits, mostly local artefacts, was a long glass cylinder labelled as a cucumber straightener and apparently invented by George Stephenson, he of the 'Rocket'. (How reassuring to know that behind every great inventor the shadow of a merely bonkers one lurks.)
From nearby Norden - which other Park and Ride delivers you to your destination by steam train? - the old puffer chugged and whistled south. It passed fern-filled embankments and chalk escarpments before dropping into wooded dells where stalls of homemade bread and preserves stood outside thatched cottages. There were station halts with period hoardings - 'For Your Throat's Sake Smoke Craven A' - and suitably quaint invitations; 'You are Welcome to Walk Around the Station Master's Garden'. At Swanage, we ate fish and chips and watched a Punch and Judy Show on the beach, liberally larded with Lord Archer jokes.
Back at the cdr, high tea was in full flow and the air was full of parental admonishments. 'No no Joshua, sausages are not hats,' one father explained while another removed a chip which his daughter had installed in his ear. Then the girls were tucked up in bed and I walked the dog above the beach before dinner. Out beyond the bay, the distant Needles shone white in the sunshine. A yacht was bucking in a lively sea. My view rather than his, I thought.
ENDS
Jeremy Seal and his family were guests at the Knoll House Hotel (01929 450450; enquiries@knollhouse.co.uk).
I remembered Studland Bay as a distant passing landmark from childhood yachting holidays; an ivory crescent of sand scored between the entrance to Poole Harbour and the chalk rocks of Old Harry and famed (among us children) for its naturists' beach. Twenty years on, however, I had two girls, aged three and two months - a tad too young to appreciate sailing - and a dog quite without sealegs. The seafarer's view of Studland was no longer on; it was high time I finally set foot in this bucolic slice of Dorset.
We drove south through late-summer clouds so low and damp that they pillowed the car bonnet. But they had lifted by Wareham, leaving the Isle of Purbeck's heaths and wheat fields to steam in the sunshine. We drove through Studland village, fixed in benevolent National Trust aspic, and followed the coast road to the Knoll House Hotel. Backseat squeals of delight greeted the huge pirate ship stranded in an impressive children's playground at the top of the drive.
This particularly visible playground must rank high among unsubtle hints - in this case, that the child-hostile have come to the wrong place. The venerable Knoll House has so long championed a distinctive brand of British family holiday - children and dogs very much included - that it has since become synonymous with Studland. The timewarp surroundings and a decor which one might kindly describe as heroically resistant to fad, not to mention the delightfully idiosyncratic but impeccably attentive practices of the staff, simultaneously evoke elements of institutions as diverse as boarding school and Butlin's, the pre-war French Riviera, P.G. Wodehouse and Eastern European health spas.
Knoll House dates from the 1930s and, with its pebble-dashed walls and those dated rooms, looks like it. But it also has indoor and outdoor pools, and numerous lounges devoted to the various elements of its surprisingly wide-ranging constituency; reading rooms and a bar for adults, a games rooms for teenagers and a playroom for young children. The place thrives on its proven eccentric formula, with many devotees returning each year. Its benevolent regime particularly appeals to extended families. 'Last year there were four generations from the same family staying here together,' a grandmother told me. I spoke to her in the children's dining room, or cdr in Knollspeak, where she was watching over two grandchildren at lunchtime.
All children under five eat in the cdr where the typical menus - fishpie and icecream at lunchtime; chicken nuggets and chips followed by chocolate cup cakes for high tea - provided our eldest, Anna, with the food of her dreams. After lunch, we walked to the beach through the splendid grounds - gardens of pine trees, expanses of heather heath, and paddocks closely cropped with suitably regulation hair cuts. Predictably enough, there were no jet skis nor banana boats here but a few sedate canoes for hire. A boy lay entombed in sand, with only his neck showing, until his teasing sister waved her icecream past his outstretched tongue one time too many, and he broke free to wrest the icecream from her. Even the view here seemed from another time; a comfortingly naive tableau of yellow sailing yachts with bright white sails pasted all over a blue sea, the stained-white chalk stacks of Old Harry fronting a headland of golden wheat, and the beachhuts at our back, neatly arranged in tiny terraces, where old couples sat out on deckchairs while tea brewed on small shiny stoves.
In the evening, a babysitter supplemented the hotel's renowned listening service whereby housekeepers are stationed on every landing from 7.30 to 11, which allowed my wife and I to effect a blissful escape. We took the air before dinner, walking through the deep woods at the back of the hotel which gave on to heathland, all purple heathers and yellow gorse. From Agglestone Rock, a much climbed and initialled monolith of red sandstone, we had excellent views of Poole Harbour.
After breakfast - a typically brisk affair served from 8.00 to 8.45 - Anna disappeared into the children's playroom. It might have proved hard to extricate her from that paradise of books, games and cartoons on the telly, except that no child was about to contest that morning's outing. Corfe Castle, with its great grey bastions and magnificent outlooks, and the adjacent steam train to Swanage might have been specially devised as child-friendly adjuncts to the Knoll House experience. After visiting the castle, we ducked into Corfe's town museum which was displayed in England's smallest town hall. The highlight among the exhibits, mostly local artefacts, was a long glass cylinder labelled as a cucumber straightener and apparently invented by George Stephenson, he of the 'Rocket'. (How reassuring to know that behind every great inventor the shadow of a merely bonkers one lurks.)
From nearby Norden - which other Park and Ride delivers you to your destination by steam train? - the old puffer chugged and whistled south. It passed fern-filled embankments and chalk escarpments before dropping into wooded dells where stalls of homemade bread and preserves stood outside thatched cottages. There were station halts with period hoardings - 'For Your Throat's Sake Smoke Craven A' - and suitably quaint invitations; 'You are Welcome to Walk Around the Station Master's Garden'. At Swanage, we ate fish and chips and watched a Punch and Judy Show on the beach, liberally larded with Lord Archer jokes.
Back at the cdr, high tea was in full flow and the air was full of parental admonishments. 'No no Joshua, sausages are not hats,' one father explained while another removed a chip which his daughter had installed in his ear. Then the girls were tucked up in bed and I walked the dog above the beach before dinner. Out beyond the bay, the distant Needles shone white in the sunshine. A yacht was bucking in a lively sea. My view rather than his, I thought.
ENDS
Jeremy Seal and his family were guests at the Knoll House Hotel (01929 450450; enquiries@knollhouse.co.uk).