HOUND LODGE

Hound Lodge was once a very luxurious home for the hounds of the Charlton Hunt: long before Goodwood House had central heating, the hounds had underfloor heating and every kind of treat. I daresay they even had a canine equivalent of their own butler. 

Here are the whelping kennels. Jolly nice they are too. If I had one of those in my garden, I wouldn't let the dog live in it, I'd turn it into my office.

Now that Hound Lodge has been immaculately restored and turned into a country retreat, it's the humans who live in the lap of luxury, though visiting dogs are very welcome - there are dog beds everywhere, a special dog menu (dogs are rumoured to get dog icecream for pudding - I wonder what flavour?), and someone on hand to wash muddy paws should they have had an enthusiastic romp through The Valdoe (a very pretty wood, with the requisite bluebells, and owls hooting at night). I didn't try the dog menu, of course, but dinner for people was glorious.

Each of the ten bedrooms is named after the hounds of the 'Glorious Twenty-Three' owned by the second Duke of Richmond in 1738. Mine was named after Dido, the leader of the pack. 

What a blissfully comfortable bed, possibly due to the mattress stuffed with sheep's wool from the Goodwood flock. I could have quite happily lived in that room - it was full of beautiful flowers and books 

and elegant objets. The bathroom was equally sybaritic - after a lovely trip to Goodwood House to gawp at the extraordinary art (Van Dyke, Veronese, Lely, Sevres porcelain, rather mindblowing) I submerged myself neck deep for a bathe in a delicious essence made from the pine needles from the Duke of Richmond's Scottish estates (I may have the pine detail wrong, but the jist is there), and read Elizabeth Taylor's In a Summer Season. By the time I'd gone properly lobster pink (to match the horrid Rita Ora nails), I was late to rejoin everyone in the drawing-room for cocktails.

Butlers? Oh, I'm an old hand with butlers now, she says, with a blasé shrug; When the lovely butler asks one if one would like something to drink, one simply says, 'Oh, a glass of champagne would be perfect, thank you.' and lo it appears.

After dinner, when we came back into the drawing room for coffee, I realised that one of these dogs

was looking at me from over the fireplace, very reprovingly, as if to purse its dog lips and say, 'I saw you have a second glass of Mersault, and now you've just asked the lovely butler for whisky.'

One has to get used to dogs staring at one at Hound Lodge - they're on every surface - 

even on the bookshelves - I rather wanted to settle down with the story of Bellman the lugubrious beagle. The fox gets a look in too from time to time -

This sweet china fox was in my room, sitting daringly on top of Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man.

The stone fox looks out over the whelping kennels, immortalised in stone. 

I used to see Lucien Freud breakfasting at the Wolseley. He didn't breakfast on sherry. Nor did I.

Instead,  I had vast amounts of delicious bacon from Goodwood pigs, cured on the home farm. This Wedgwood china is gorgeous. I wish I could get away with it in West London, but although there are many foxes here, and an awful lot of hounds (well, French bulldogs mostly, round here, but dogs, anyway), it wouldn't do.

I came home and was rather disappointed to discover it wasn't nearly as nice as Hound Lodge - how quickly one becomes accustomed to the good life - and spent the evening assembling flat-packed furniture. The glamour.

Hound Lodge at The Kennels, Goodwood, Chichester. Bring a dog, or borrow someone elses.