The Lake District’s Sharrow Bay Hotel is to relaunch next year under new ownership, with highly-rated restaurant Allium transferring from nearby Askham Hall. Opened in 1948, Sharrow Bay was famous as Britain’s first country-house hotel, but has been closed since 2020.

The hotel, which overlooks Ullswater, was run for 50 years by Brian Sack and his partner Francis Coulson, the legendary chef who invented sticky toffee pudding. It was the first Relais & Chateaux property in the UK and established the Lake District’s reputation as a gastronomic powerhouse – and was where Paul McCartney proposed to Heather Mills.

The new owners are Ciel Hotels, run by Charles Lowther, who opened his family’s Askham Hall near Penrith as a restaurant with rooms in 2008; Ciel also operates the Queen’s Head in Askham and the George & Dragon in Clifton. The extended Lowther family (including the Earls of Lonsdale) have been influential property owners in Cumbria for 900 years.

Chef Richard Swale has developed Askham’s restaurant Allium into what this year’s Harden’s guide hails as a “dazzling operation” – noted for a wine list that runs to 2,000 bottles. Allium will move into a larger dining room at the refurbished Sharrow Bay next year, when Askham Hall will switch to hosting weddings.

Charles Lowther said: “We are honoured to have the opportunity to bring this magical place back to life and we’ll be putting everything we have into its resurrection to make it what it deserves to be – the most special and intoxicating place to spend time.

“Every single element of our plan for Sharrow Bay has been painstakingly thought out, and we’ve appointed the best people we can find, to enhance the magnetic energy, captivating views and surrounding nature that make it so enchanting. Our vision is to combine this with our ingrained field-to-fork food philosophy, to create an inspiring, restorative, nourishing sanctuary for our guests.”