Montacute Airbnb: UK Road Trip Part 6

Back on to the Road Trip posts before it’s too late! I called my last post Part 5 (and a third) because I was intending to do another 2 posts about this stop, but decided to merge those into one as they were pretty much all about our accommodation in Montacute: this gorgeous Airbnb, the Estate Office.

As I mentioned, we spent the day at Montacute House which was gorgeous then headed over to check in at our Airbnb which was in the same small village. We’d already checked out the location on Google Maps but couldn’t quite believe that we’d got such a lovely location for such a small price. This was one of our more expensive Airbnbs at £78 per night but I can honestly say that it was worth it. Located down a gravel track, our room (although it was more than this, with a large living area, modern bathroom and bedroom) was a dairy that was renovated in 2014/15. The folder in our room gave us more information on the location, so I thought I’d share!

The dairy was built in around 1850 and was used for more than 100 years as part of the Abbey Farm, so called as it was located on the site of the Norman Clunaic Priory of St Peter and St Paul that dates back to the 16th century – only parts of this still remain such as the dovecote, gatehouse and Abbey Pond which you can see in some of our photos. This actually has even further historic roots back to an original Saxon church site which stood on this site and was taken over by William the Conqueror in 1067 – a historic site indeed! The Priory itself was one of the last to be built prior to the Dissolution in 1539.
The owners now are very passionate about restoring the historic buildings that still stand on the site, from the farm to the monastic buildings. And you can tell that they’ve been worked on to a very high standard – the old dairy conversion was excellently converted to be modern, warm and stylish. We felt SO comfortable staying there and are already planning to go back again in future.

The old dairy was full of small details that made it feel cosy, such as knitted cushion covers and lamp shades, comfy sofas, a log burner (that was all ready for us just to set light to), exposed wooden beams, a gorgeous lantern light and a desk complete with a colour in guest book! As you can see, I concentrated on colouring squirrels for each season! There was an autumn bouquet on the desk too which smelled just like autumn, which is a weird thing to say, but it was lovely.

We stayed in Montacute on the evening of my birthday and actually had a table booked at a restaurant that was about a 40 minute drive away, but we loved the Airbnb so much (and were quite tired from our previous evening’s meal at Rick Stein’s) that we decided we wanted to stay in. In the end, we discovered that Yeovil was quite nearby and we actually ordered takeaway pizza, wandered round Yeovil before picking it and heading back to watch Midsomer Murders and eat pizza in front of the log burner – best birthday! Apparently I watch Midsomer Murders on all the important occasions in my life 😀

As I said, the village of Montacute itself was just gorgeous, so before we went into Yeovil, we went for a walk around the village. We managed to do a bit of a circuit which took us round the village so we could see the gorgeous buildings, then up the hill and down a track which brought us right back down into the Abbey Farm. And then I had to snap a few photos around the Abbey Farm, both on our walk (in the yellow jumper) and on the way out of Montacute the next morning. Like the day of my birthday, the sun was shining and it was fairly warm, so the farm and dairy looked beautiful in the sunlight. Like I said, definitely a place we want to return to one day!