Excellence Luxury Villas — United Kingdom
Luxury Villa & Estate Rentals in the UK
Cornwall · Cotswolds · Scottish Highlands · Lake District · Yorkshire · Devon · Wales · Norfolk
1,100+ individually vetted private estates — Cornish cliff manors, Cotswolds country houses, Scottish castles and Highland lodges
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Britain's most dramatic Atlantic coastline — and the finest seafood in England
Cornwall is the most sought-after domestic holiday destination for the British upper-middle class — and has been since the artists of the Newlyn School in the 1880s first established it as a place of exceptional light and wild beauty. The coastline between Land's End and the Lizard peninsula contains some of the finest cliff walking in Europe; the South West Coast Path runs for 630 miles from Minehead to Poole, passing beaches, fishing coves and headlands that in fine weather could be mistaken for Portugal. Our Cornwall collection ranges from converted fishing warehouses above St Ives harbour to clifftop manor houses above Kynance Cove and Porthcurno, and architect-designed modern houses with ocean-facing infinity pools that would not be out of place on the Côte d'Azur.
The food in Cornwall has transformed. Rick Stein's restaurants in Padstow attracted a dining culture that has spread throughout the county; the Tate St Ives made it culturally credible; the surf at Fistral, Watergate Bay and Sennen made it sporting. The Isles of Scilly — a 45-minute helicopter flight from Penzance — offer a genuinely subtropical microclimate, white sand beaches and an isolation that is among the most complete available anywhere in the British Isles. Devon's Jurassic Coast (UNESCO), Dartmoor, and the restaurants of Dartmouth and Salcombe round out a south-west peninsula that rewards repeated visits.
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Honey-stone manors, walled gardens and the quintessential English countryside
The Cotswolds is the most consistently over-photographed and yet genuinely beautiful landscape in England — a 800-square-mile AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) of limestone ridges, clear chalk streams, market towns and village architecture that has barely changed since the wool trade made this region the richest in medieval England. Rent a 15th-century manor house with a walled kitchen garden, a heated outdoor pool and three acres of private grounds, and within twenty minutes you can be in Burford, Bourton-on-the-Water, Chipping Campden or Blenheim Palace — Churchill's birthplace and one of the finest Baroque buildings in Britain.
Our Cotswolds collection is particularly strong for large groups and family celebrations — manor houses sleeping 20 to 30 guests with event licences, private chapels, croquet lawns and boot rooms for the country pursuits that the Cotswolds has always provided: shooting, fishing, riding, walking the Cotswold Way. Oxford and Stratford-upon-Avon are both within 45 minutes. Bath — the most perfectly preserved Georgian city in Britain, a UNESCO World Heritage Site — is an hour's drive. The Cotswolds is also exceptional for winter holidays: the frost on the limestone and the wood fires in the manor house fireplaces make it as compelling in December as in June.
Explore Cotswolds estates ›UK — 1,100+ luxury private estates across Britain
From Cornish cliff manors and Cotswolds honey-stone houses to Scottish castles, Lake District lodges and Norfolk coastal retreats.
From the cliff-top manors of Cornwall and the honey-stone estates of the Cotswolds to the castles of the Scottish Highlands, the lakes and fells of Cumbria, the moors of Yorkshire and the tidal marshes of Norfolk — the British Isles contains more variety of extraordinary private estate than any country of comparable size.
United Kingdom — 1,100+ individually vetted private estates
Private deer forests, whisky lochs and the most dramatic landscape in Britain
The Scottish Highlands offer something no other part of the British Isles can provide: genuine remoteness on a magnificent scale. A private castle estate in Inverness-shire or Sutherland — sleeping 20 guests with its own loch for brown trout fishing, 2,000 acres of private deer forest, a whisky cellar stocked with single malts from the distilleries visible from the library windows and a professional stalker on staff — is an experience that has no equivalent anywhere in Europe. Our Scottish collection includes castles of genuine antiquity (11th century, 13th century, 16th century) fully modernised to the highest standard, private islands accessible only by private boat, and shooting lodges during the grouse and deer seasons arranged to the finest sporting standards.
The North Coast 500 — the circular driving route around the northern Highlands coast — can be staged from a single property in Ross-shire or Caithness with day excursions, the most spectacular coastal road in Britain unfolding each day. Loch Lomond, only 25 minutes from Glasgow, has private lochside estates that offer the feeling of absolute wilderness with international airport access thirty minutes away. Edinburgh townhouses — Georgian New Town properties with private walled gardens — serve guests who want the finest city in Britain with the Highlands accessible within two hours.
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England's grandest landscapes — Wordsworth's lakes and Brontë moors
The Lake District — England's largest National Park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site — contains the finest concentration of lake-and-fell scenery in Britain, and our Cumbrian collection includes country houses above Windermere and Ullswater with private lake frontages, boat houses and jetties, and estates in the quieter western dales of Eskdale and Wasdale that still feel genuinely undiscovered. The Lake District works in all seasons: the fells above Helvellyn and Scafell Pike in summer, the low mist over the lakes in autumn and winter creating a landscape of extraordinary atmospheric intensity that Wordsworth described better than anyone has since.
Yorkshire is England's largest county and the most underrated by international visitors. The Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors offer moors and dales walking of the highest order; the Wolds near Beverley and the Hockney country of Driffield are gentle and green; York — the finest mediaeval city in England — is a day-trip destination of the first order. Northumberland's Kielder Water dark sky reserve (Europe's largest protected dark sky area), Hadrian's Wall and the coast from Bamburgh to the Farne Islands offer wildlife, history and privacy that no southern English county can match. Norfolk's Holkham, Brancaster and the broads complete a northern and eastern England offering of genuine distinction.
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1,100+ luxury properties — Cornish cliff manors, Cotswolds estates, Scottish castles and Highland lodges