The Spa at Coworth Park

Welcome to the third iteration Fashion’The Global Spa Guide features 100 of the world’s best spas, based on first-person reviews and careful editing. This year, we’re refocusing our attention on places that have a reputation for providing exceptional care for body and mind, even though the list is vast. Whatever you’re looking for in your health and wellness, you’ll find it here.

Why go here?

If you’re looking for the perfect combination of closeness to London (just 45 minutes’ drive from the city center and 20 minutes from Heathrow Airport) and absolute tranquility (situated in over 240 acres of Berkshire countryside on the edge of Great Windsor Park), then Coworth Park Hotel and Spa is the hotel for you. It belongs to the ultra-high-end Dorchester Collection, so unabashed luxury is the norm here, but at the same time, the character of the place cannot be sacrificed.

You can feel the feeling from the moment you pull into the scenic drive, where you might see a game in action on the world-famous polo fields or guests strolling through the giant wildflower meadow. Yet as soon as you breeze into the central building – a Georgian manor house that was remodeled in the late 2000s before the hotel opened in 2010 – you’re greeted with a warm and convivial welcome: impeccably dressed staff in smart brown plaid suits and patterned silk scarves will steal your car away and guide you to your room, which is spread out across the main building and various stables and cottages that make up their own mini-village, just a little one. It’s only a few minutes walk away. (I stayed in one of the latter rooms, which had recently been renovated to reflect the hotel’s signature country-chic style more stylishly: I particularly liked the see-through cocktail tables, with autumn leaves hanging as if frozen in ice.)

But what you really want to know about is the spa, and the one at Coworth Park is impressive – it was already world-class but reopened last summer after a complete revamp and now features tastefully refreshed treatment rooms, wider thermal circuits and an expanded gym. Where many country house hotel spas tend to be gimmicky or overly fancy, this is more of a classic spa, but everything is executed to the highest degree, from Natura Bissé facials to massages using organic Wildsmith oil.