Our team have been up to Hampshire this week, to Lyndhurst in the heart of the New Forest to be exact – and look what we’ve got! Boy oh boy, we are so thrilled to add Ortus House to our portfolio; we’d be doing cartwheels in the office if we could! This is a truly amazing house with a lovely history – it used to be a maternity hospital so lots of bonny babies came into the world there, curling their little toes, the source of much rejoicing! Maybe that’s what makes it so perfect for celebrations and entertaining, the laid back happy feel that wafts through every room.

We get a lot of enquiries these days from people who have a property that they think is right for the Sleeps12 collection. Sometimes it’s a house or cottage that’s already been run as a large group holiday let for months or years, sometimes it’s a newly built or developed property and sometimes, it’s just a collection of old barns waiting for a new lease of life.

We’ve all got our different ideas about what makes a holiday, and for some it’s a big group of friends going off on an all-inclusive package holiday to somewhere in the sun where you share a hotel and all it’s facilities with hundreds of other people – you eat with them, you socialise with them, you relax with them, you swim with them.

The West Country has long been favoured as a UK holiday destination, and we’ve got some fabulous properties for large group stays in this part of the world. Like this beauty, tucked away on a private estate deep in the Somerset countryside; snooze space for 18 people in 9 en suite bedrooms, an indoor swimming pool and a games room.

We’re delighted to show you our latest addition – this fantastic large group holiday home just a few miles from Bath and very close to the lovely little town of Bradford on Avon. The Plough used to be a country pub, and as with all country pubs these days it was a case of use it or lose it; it didn’t get used so it was lost, but fortunately it was rescued and sympathetically transformed into supersize self-catering accommodation for up to 29 people.