Looking Back and Looking Forward
2025 & 2026
2025 marked five years that Will and I have been at Preston Hall and it seems wise to reflect on how far we have come, but also what else we have coming up. We have found the last few years incredibly rewarding as the endless hours of planning, deliberating and building are starting to come together.
To kick start things, we have Dairy Cottage. It feels like it has been open for years, but 2025 was in fact our first full year of operation. It has come together beautifully, and we have had some amazing feedback from guests. We still have plans to extend the outside area offering, but we are so happy that our guests have been enjoying it. It has even been featured in The Nord Room, Vogue, Conde Nast Traveller, and House & Garden. A big year!
Expanding on the hospitality front we have hosted a very small handful of weddings, which has been lovely for us. They have all been less than 40 people and in The Walled Garden, which makes them feel very intimate and exclusive. We hope to do more of these. We also hosted a large family wedding and our first Chinese Tea Party.
The main house redecoration continues, and we are hoping to launch the house for accommodation in the not too distant future. It will sleep 22 people across 11 bedrooms and will be a very exciting next step in our hospitality journey. More on this over the next few months.
Up at Rosemains Steading, two new flower farms have joined the community, which have really added to the wider team - Rosie Cut Flowers and Moss Botanicals. We have had four successful markets, and we combined the summer market with our annual Open Farm Sunday event, welcoming our largest audience yet of 2,500 people. A big milestone for us! A lot of hard work, but it has all been worth it.
Finally, at the farm we have expanded our forestry business and have found ourselves working all over Southern Scotland on the side of motorways, on private estates, in urban areas, castle embankments and even Holyrood Palace.
What does that mean for 2026…
Well… our main project is Preston Hall House and the plan is to launch in Spring/Summer 2026 alongside a new website. Work on the house has been going on for about 3 years now so it will be amazing to finally welcome guests. You have probably seen snippets of the interiors over the last few years so a lot of work has been going on behind the scenes. This will undoubtedly take up the majority of our time when its up and running so if anyone fancies a stay just let us know…
Back up at the farm we will be expanding at Rosemains Steading with a new shed for one of our groundworks contractors. This has taken a while to get off the ground and it will be great to have another business on site. There may well be some other developments on the Rosemains front, but they are too early to talk about. Very annoying of us, I know!
Expect another bumper Open Farm Sunday in June. It is always such a good day and we hope to combine it with a market again.
As always things will appear last minute and we rise to the challenge. Fun and games!