Hastings House Country House Hotel

A Sussex Manor Standing Above Ganges Harbour

Salt Spring Island is the largest of the Gulf Islands and the one people mean when they talk about leaving the mainland behind. Hastings House sits on its eastern shoulder, twenty two acres of oceanfront running down to Ganges Harbour, with a Sussex style manor at the water’s edge and gardens, a farm and a greenhouse spread behind it. The estate reads as an English country house that took root on the Pacific coast, which is an odd sentence and an accurate one. Eighteen suites and cottages are distributed across it, so the property never feels like a hotel with corridors.

Why It Works

We keep this one because the farm is not decoration. The greenhouse and the vegetable beds supply Manor Dining, and the menu is written each day around what has been picked, which is the thing most country house hotels claim and few arrange. Beyond that, the estate is large enough to spend a day inside without repeating yourself, between the gardens, the shore path and the spa. It carries a Relais & Châteaux membership, and the eighteen keys keep the scale of a private house rather than a resort.

Why This Location

Ganges is the island’s working village and it is a short way down the road, which means the Saturday market, the galleries and the studios of a place that has drawn artists and makers for decades. Salt Spring carries three vineyards, so an afternoon can be planned around wine without leaving the island. The water is the other half of the argument: sailing, whale watching and kayaking all start from the harbour below. Everything arrives by ferry or float plane, and that filter is precisely what keeps the island the way its regulars want it.

Fast Facts

• Price: Luxe

• Vibe: Country house, coastal, unhurried, garden minded

• Rooms: 18 suites, rooms and cottages, including six Hillside Suites, the Farm and Somerset signature suites, Manor rooms and five Barn rooms

• Best For: Couples on a slow week, food travellers, families taking the Churchill cottage

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: The greenhouse and kitchen garden, open to guests and visibly feeding the dining room

• Dining: Manor Dining, Swiss trained executive chef Marcel Kauer, a menu rewritten daily on estate and island produce, with local wines and harbour views

• Amenities: Wellspring Spa in a cedar clad barn, working farm and gardens, shoreline access, three meeting rooms, free parking, pets accepted

• Attractions: Ganges village and its Saturday market just down the road, the island’s three vineyards, the artists’ studios of Salt Spring, sailing and whale watching from the harbour

Eighteen Keys Spread Across an Estate

There is no single building to choose from, which is the pleasure of the place. The Hillside Suites carry English names, Essex, Hawthorne, Heather, Laurel, Sussex and Willow, and sit up the slope with the harbour below. The Farm East and Farm West signature suites put you beside the growing beds. The Barn holds five rooms, among them the Hayloft and the Sealoft, converted rather than built. Manor East and Manor West are the two rooms inside the old house itself, for anyone who wants to sleep in the Sussex walls. Churchill and Post are the cottages, and Churchill takes a family of several.

Manor Dining and the Garden Behind It

Marcel Kauer trained in Switzerland and cooks here with the discipline that implies, but the menu is set by the harvest rather than by a fixed carte. What comes out of the greenhouse and the beds in the morning decides the evening, and the rest is sourced on the island and the coast. The dining room looks over the harbour, the wine list leans on British Columbia, and dinner runs long because there is nowhere else on the estate to hurry to.

The Barn That Became a Spa

Wellspring Spa occupies a cedar clad barn on the property, and it keeps the modest scale of the building rather than pretending to be a city spa. Massage and facial work are the core of it, including the signature facial treatments the house is known for. Guests tend to pair a treatment with the shore path and the gardens, which is how the estate is meant to be used: slowly, on foot, and mostly outdoors.