The Road Goes Ever On: Breadsall Priory

Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Breadsall Priory

Our next stop, after beautiful Wales, was Breadsall Priory, in Derbyshire, back in England. Don't bother to look up Breadsall Priory on your National Trust or English Heritage maps. It's a Marriott hotel and golf resort. We had a few free Marriott nights soon expiring, and Breadsall Priory was close enough to serve as a base for our visit to Chatsworth house and garden. Breadsall really was a priory way back before the Dissolution; it passed on into private hands, got rebuilt, sold, added onto, sold, renovated, rinse, repeat, etc., for 500 years. The Darwin family actually were among its owners a couple generations before Charles. Precious little remains of the actual Priory. In our times, the owners got the idea of sprucing up the main house--now reception, offices, bar and restaurant, meeting rooms--and adding on a new building or two for sleeping rooms, the pool, and such. Several more buildings servicing the golf resort were added. At some point Marriott became part of the deal, and so you now have a 13th century Priory/hotel/and two full golf courses complex. Marriott touts it as its oldest property, and I would say it's the second most interesting Marriott property I have been in, after the Marriott Marquis in Atlanta. But that's another story. Breadsall Priory's landscaping is impressive, in any case, and it would fit comfortably into any of the great gardens we've seen these past few weeks.