Our Story

The Quiet Acre has been a long time coming. We’d been talking about it for years — evenings at the kitchen table, half-finished glasses of wine, sketching layouts on the backs of envelopes. The field had always been there, on the edge of the smallholding, doing not very much. It felt like a waste, in the best possible sense of the word.

We’re Joel and Sarah Horne. We moved to this patch of countryside about eight years ago, after two decades of city life between us. Joel had been running a joinery workshop; Sarah had spent twelve years working in landscape architecture. Between us we had a strange collection of useful skills and a shared conviction that what people needed — what we needed — was somewhere genuinely quiet to go.

How it took shape

The first shepherd’s hut went up in the spring of 2021. Joel made most of the internal fittings himself — the built-in bed frame, the shelving, the small writing desk by the window. Sarah designed the planted approach path and the wildflower planting around the field boundary. We opened with a single unit and two weeks of bookings, mostly friends and family who were kind enough to be honest about what was working and what wasn’t.

By the following year we had three units and a waiting list. Not because we’d done any clever marketing, but because the people who came told other people, and those people came back themselves. That felt like the right kind of growth — slow, grounded, real.

What matters to us

We’re not interested in The Quiet Acre becoming a brand or a chain or anything that requires us to be somewhere other than here. We live on site. We’re the ones who make up the beds, light the welcome fires in October and November, leave the eggs from the chickens on the doorstep on a Saturday morning. It’s personal because it has to be — this is our home as much as it’s your holiday.

We also try to run the place properly. The wood burners run on certified seasoned hardwood from a supplier about four miles away. We compost what we can, the water is heated by solar panels where the roof allows it, and we’ve let the eastern hedgerow grow long because the yellowhammers nest there in June. None of this is virtue signalling — it’s just what seemed obvious.

Come and see

If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t feel the need to be entertained every moment of the day, we think you’ll like it here. If you’d rather have a children’s activity programme and a cocktail bar on the premises, we’re probably not the right fit — and we’d sooner tell you that now than have you disappointed when you arrive.

Take a look at what we’ve got, check availability, and if you want to ask us anything at all before you book, please do. We’re usually around.