New Forest Hotels in Hampshire

Backing onto Hampshire's New Forest (now recognised as a National Park), the Woodlands Lodge Hotel is a country house hotel with beautiful bedrooms and elegant dining room. You can walk for miles through the glades, heathland and inclosures that make up the New Forest. You're bound to come across the New Forest ponies that keep the landscape so unique. There are also several local towns & cities and plenty of local attractions to visit or you may prefer to just relax in our gardens.

Do you want to get away to somewhere special but feel tied because of your pet? We have a limited number of rooms to which you are welcome to bring your dog.

Winter special offer

Best available room for just £56.50 pppn

The hotel is also ideal for small conferences and weddings with up to 90 guests using our elegant dining room which opens into our new Garden conservatory.

Easter

from only £219 pp for 2 day DBB break

Following the visit of the Hotel Inspector our programme of refurbishment has stepped up a gear. Many of our bedrooms and bathrooms have been completely made over.

Woodlands Lodge New Forest Hotel

Of all the New Forest hotels, the Woodlands Lodge Hotel, formally a New Forest hunting lodge dating from 1770, is in an especially beautiful and peaceful setting, a good mile or more away from the main roads. It was converted to a hotel in the 1950's and extensively renovated as a luxury hotel in the 90's. Woodlands is situated right on the edge of the New Forest which is a unique area of 144 square miles of woods and heathland. As well as enjoying all that English forests have to offer, there is a large variety of local attractions, recreational activities, cathedrals and coastal cities and towns. Alternatively you may prefer just to relax in the hotel or around the grounds. Be careful not to trip over our free range chickens that wander around the grounds! You may also like to say hello to Scrappy our pet sheep. New Forest ponies and cattle also wander in and out of our paddock at the back of the hotel.

New Forest History

The New Forest is not really 'new' as it was created in 1079 by William I (known as William the Conqueror) as a hunting area, mainly of deer. This is a unique area of historical, ecological and agricultural significance and retains many of the rural practices conceded by the Crown in medieval times to local people. The main one of these is the pasturing of ponies, cattle, pigs and donkeys in the open Forest by local inhabitants known as Commoners. The New Forest has also been an important source of timber for the Crown. It is a nationally important environment of woodland pasture, heaths, bogs and the remains of 17th, 18th & 19th century coppices and timber plantations.

The New Forest is a beautiful area, but it is not "natural" or wild in the sense of being untouched by man. The Forest has been moulded by the whims and fads of monarchs since William, and the changing priorities of the Crown over the last 900 years: hunting deer; felling timber for naval shipbuilding; commercial timber production; and now recreation.

Also of interest are the vestiges of the ancient Forest Law courts that controlled the local population and their animals (to ensure they did not interfere with the deer and its food) still administer the Forest.

"But in its wild scenery lies its greatest charm...... Nowhere, in extent at least, spread such stretches of heath and moor, golden in the spring with the blaze of furze, and in the autumn purple with heather, and bronzed with the fading fern. Nowhere in England rise such oak-woods, their boughs rimed with the frostwork of lichens, and dark beech-groves with their floor of red brown leaves, on which the branches weave their own warp and woof of light and shade." John Wise, 1895 - The New Forest. Its History and Its Scenery."

More about the New Forest...

The New Forest is an outstanding recreational area for walking and riding so why not come along and spend a few days here?