A BEAUTIFUL countryside town is getting a luxury hotel and country club in a bespoke multi-million pound revamp.
The current site will be knocked down and replaced with a new hotel with a spa and restaurants.
Gatton Manor Hotel & Country Club, nestled in Ockley, near Dorking, Surrey, will demolish its closed hotel and golf course and replace them with a high-end luxury resort.
The new countryside retreat will include 81 guest rooms, two restaurants, a spa with both indoor and wild swimming pools, and a luxury gym with treatment and relaxation areas.
One restaurant will serve fine-dining food, a plan that is earmarked to be a highlight of the refurbishment.
Up to 100 memberships to the gym will be offered to residents within a 3km radius of the new site, given at a preferential rate.
Keeping with the luxury fitness aspect of the resort, developers hope to make room for two tennis courts and three padel courts on the site.
This move comes after plans were made to permanently close the 18-hole golf course on-site, which had been running at a loss for a few years.
Spanning 6,629 yards and being operational for over 60 years, this stretch of greenery will be rewilded into a mixed wood pasture with a wildflower meadow and wetland habitats.
The 22-hectare site is located near Dorking, a historic market town in the heart of the Surrey Hills.
It is an affluent area, named one of the best places to live in the UK by The Sunday Times, with its leafy environment and charming villages hailing it as a “Hollywood” of country life.
The plans will also introduce 290 construction jobs in the area for the two-year building phase, as well as 145 positions once completed.
Cllr Roger Adams for Bookham West said: “With global warming and rising temperatures I suspect a lot of people seeking a holiday will no longer be heading to the Mediterranean but may well seek to have staycations, and where better to stay for a holiday than Surrey.
“We’ve got beautiful country here and we do need developments such as this. It will provide employment and enhance the visitor schemes.”
Cllr Monica Weller, also for Bookham West, said: “It really is quite fantastic as far as I’m concerned. A business like this has got to bring something really quite fantastic to our area and that is really to be welcomed.”