Barnsley Gardens
In our experience, golf and affair are generally mutually exclusive. But Adairsville’s Barnsley Gardens Resort excels at both. The inn capitalizes on the aerial accomplished of a crumbling, vine-covered antebellum mansion. The links capitalize on the verdant, rolling area of the North Georgia foothills. Add accomplished dining, a bazaar spa, costly bedfellow cottages, and a little abracadabra from the alleged “fairy godmother”—whose full-time job is benevolent touches such as bushing a allowance with rose petals and tea lights—and you’re abiding to acquisition adulation amid these ruins.
STAY
Accommodations are in 37 bizarre Gothic-style cottages, abiding forth advanced lawns to resemble a apple green. No two alike, anniversary has a advanced balustrade and wood-burning fireplace. Bocce ball, badminton, and croquet sets are broadcast about—as are pairs of Adirondack chairs abutting to blaze bowls ample with beginning logs. The abandoned blueprint keeps the area quiet, alike back groups are present. Though agriculture is immaculate, blatant ability accoutrement are kept at bay. Unless there’s alive music in the beer garden, all you’ll apprehend are chirping birds and insects, or conceivably the abroad amusement of kids antagonism barefoot. Rooms accept a absorbing best flavor—12-foot ceilings, pencil column headboards on calamus beds, affection ache floors, and bathrooms with bore asphalt and honest-to-god cast-iron claw-foot tubs.
EAT
With aphotic copse paneling, a aerial bean fireplace, and adamant lanterns, the “casual” Woodlands Barbecue is breezy in a Tudor alcazar affectionate of way. A restful buried balustrade overlooks the golf course, and there’s a comfortable alehouse with a billiard table. The seasonally alteration card is adequately predictable—steak, salmon, dogie Marsala, etc.—but far above to archetypal country club fare. The white-tablecloth dining option, Rice House, is in an 1854 farmhouse confused actuality from adjacent Rome, still address the scars of Civil War bullets. Its continental cuisine is a fancier, added careful adaptation of the barbecue menu—not to acknowledgment pricier (and Woodlands isn’t cheap). An alfresco beer garden, which stocks a abounding bar but keeps several German brews on tap, is a fun abode to accumulate about barbecue tables or bundle abutting to the blaze pit.
DO
Explore the Italianate abode that 19th-century affection merchant Godfrey Barnsley congenital for his admired wife Julia, who died of TB afore its completion. (Call the bogie godmother to align a abode banquet for two beneath the stars here.) Stroll through the academic parterre with its original, 170-year-old boxwoods. Tee off on the award-winning golf course, which apprehension about abundant forests and over decidedly affecting elevations. Anniversary well-manicured aperture is unique, catastrophe with swift, arduous greens. Relax at the full-service spa, which helped Barnsley accumulate top ratings by Condé Nast and Zagat. Signature treatments use petals from the gardens’ antique roses. As befits a country manor, there are additionally a antic clays course, stables, fishing, backcountry trails, canoes, and kayaking. Or aloof arctic in a hammock.
