The group currently includes eight properties, and hopes to get planning permission to convert two listed buildings into the new properties. The Pig-on the Farm is expected to open in 2024, located in a mid-16th-century listed stone-built farmhouse. It’s surrounded by convertible barns, stables and outhouses, and is set in 53 acres of pasture and arable land on the south-west edge of the Walton Estate in South Warwickshire.
The Pig-at Groombridge is slated to open in 2025 in Groombridge Place, a moated manor house in the village of Groombridge, south-west of Tunbridge Wells. The house has provided the backdrop to films including the 2005 production of Pride & Prejudice starring Keira Knightley.
Like their sister properties the restaurants will use food grown on site and produce from suppliers within 25 miles. The teams will grow vegetables and fruit in kitchen gardens and mushroom-growing houses and use the on-site smokery. There will also be resident sheep, hens, quail and pigs.
Chairman Robin Hutson said: “We are excited to acquire two genuinely unspoilt listed gems. We look forward to doing these beautiful buildings justice and restoring them sensitively, with their historic importance at the forefront of our decision making. These fascinating buildings complement our existing portfolio with each of them situated some distance from our other hotels. As with all of our hotels, we hope to create these with unique characteristics yet still very much designed with the quality of detail that has become The Pig look."
