Careys Hotel + Spa - Divine Relaxation

Hey everyone!

So I was beyond lucky to partner up with the absolutely divine Careys Hotel and Senspa. I did a proper review of the spa side of the experience here.

So Careys Manor is a luxury retreat in the middle of the New Forest full of history and rest bite. It is defintely an interesting place because it has a vibe that’s much older than the renovation and I wanted to find out a little bit more.

I was really interested in the architecture because the main manor area is distinct from the extended building that homes the bedrooms, so you literally enter the halls and it feels like going back in time. It’s really lovely and I grabbed a photo of one of the illustrations of what the building once looked like for reference. Some of the more expensive suites were leading from the reception but we stayed in the Oakwood suites that backed the gardens.

The rooms range from £175 to £335 and are all pretty much comfort-orientated. They’re not the most flashy hotel rooms you’ve ever experienced and people really go to places like Careys Manor as a relaxing retreat, you don’t go there to take a selfie as it’s a hotel with spa facilities that are the focus of the trip. It was clean and comfortable and I would say the only problem we had throughout the whole stay was that the bed was incorrectly made, but we amended that instantly when telling the room service. The staff throughout our stay were above average and I was amazed at how great they were, so I have to commend not only the people in the restaurants we visited, but also meeting the porters in the hallway was a lovely exchange.

The room was a long double, it had a comfy desk area, little table and couch. The bed could be a double or two singles depending on what you wanted and it came with a bath and shower.

Senspa gave me a lot of thier products to try including their moisturising body wash and their muscle ache soak, they are absolutely gorgeous smelling and I’ll talk a little bit more about their stance on wellness in the spa side of the review. The gardnes were very beautiful and you were opened into a sort of communal feel as the back end of each room had a fenced in sort of divide and you could actually see into other peoples rooms a little, but it was so quiet and everyone was there to chill out that there was literally not one incedent where I felt invaded of privacy or vica versa. The gardens were relaxing and there was a cute sundial, it was a really peacefun environment.

Some of the backstory of the Manor, it was established by William the Conqueror as a royal hunting ground in 1079 and was hugely popular during this period. It was technically a lodge as opposed to a manor, but because these old time Kings had all the property in the land they were kind of used as bartering tools when people wanted to get other rich people on side, and it was given to John Carey in 1660 who's name became attached.

The original lodge was then demolished and the present version was built in 1888 and stood across 14 acres of land, so the local cottages within that area still are nicknamed Careys Cottages. It then became a Hotel during wartime and a lot of the land was sold off, and was then refurbished in the 60s. Then again refurbished in the 2000s to become Senspa and is a hybrid of times gone by and new comfort.

It was a lovely stay and individual of the Spa I would have given it a 4 out of 5.

Let me know what you think of the history of the building in the comments below.