Trevor Hall features in sumptuous country house weekend

* The facade of historic Trevor Hall.

An historic Llangollen mansion features in a sumptuous £1,500-a-head long weekend aimed at book-lovers who also like to travel.

An organisation called Strong Sense of Place has a podcast, a website and a section dedicated to “travel and the books we love”.  

It has just sent details to potential travellers of a “Top Secret Very Exciting Project,” it says it has been working on behind the scenes and is billed as a “modern take on the traditional manor house weekend”.

Describing 18th century Trevor Hall on the outskirts of Llangollen, the blurb says: “Together, we'll make ourselves at home in this historic Georgian mansion surrounded by the picturesque North Wales countryside.

“We'll talk about books, share gourmet meals in the Great Hall, play parlor (sic) games, ramble in the Welsh hills, listen to stories by candlelight, and be dazzled by an illusionist from London.”

Clearly aimed at visitors from the United States, the weekend begins in Manchester on a Thursday where the group will take over a boutique hotel in the city center (sic), enjoy an evening pub meet-up and spend the night.

* The drawing room at Trevor Hall.

Next day the group visits the Elizabeth Gaskell House in Manchester for a private tour of the Victorian villa where the author wrote her classic novel North and South and entertained literary friends like Charlotte Brontë and Charles Dickens.

Later they move over the Welsh border to Llangollen – “a charming historic town on the River Dee in North Wales” and their destination of Trevor Hall.

There, the itinerary includes games and conversation in the drawing room, formal dinners in the Great Hall, cocktail party and full afternoon tea plus, on the Saturday night, a séance show with an illusionist from London..

The weekend also includes a guided walk along the Llangollen Canal.

Menus at Trevor Hall, according to Strong Sense of Place, have been designed in collaboration with Welsh caterers Chris and Amy Yapp.

“Their carefully crafted meals feature Welsh specialties — Glamorgan Sausage Rolls, Welsh Lamb Lolly Pops, Laverbread, Welsh Cakes, Bara Brith — and local ingredients, including salted butter, honey, and produce from local farms,” says the description.

Cost of the four-day weekend, for which there are two choices of dates next October, is $1,850 US dollars per person, double occupancy, or around £1,518.

* For more information on the weekend, go to: Spend a Bookish Weekend with Us in a Country Manor House