Are you sitting comfortably? Because as boutique hotels in Norfolk go, this one is a little different. True, there are other luxury hotels housed in historic buildings, but few that set out to tell their story as imaginatively – and boldly – as we do here at The Harper.
The setting is Langham, a pretty village just a mile inland from the coast at Blakeney, Norfolk. Locals remember the brick and flint-built barns just off North Street as home to Langham Glass – a cottage industry that outgrew its premises as glassblowing blossomed. Several years and a remarkable transformation later, the main barn is now home to one of the most distinctive luxury hotels in Norfolk. Retaining the fabric of the building and retelling its story with a bold, industrial aesthetic in its public areas, The Harper complements modernity with continuity, marrying past and present without an ounce of country house chintz.
It’s a look that’s something of an homage to the hotel’s namesake. Stanley Harper Cutmore was Norfolk through and through. Grandfather to the Cutmore-Scott family who own and run The Harper, Stanley was a mechanic by trade. He ran Cutmore’s of Barrack Street, Norwich with his brother Jim, together keeping the business in the Cutmore family for four generations. He and his wife Ivy loved the coast and came here often. Fittingly, the iron, copper, oak and slate of The Harper’s interior today lends it an unfussy, faintly mechanical air that evokes not only the building’s industrial past but also Stanley’s life and work. We think he would approve.
Just the right combination of rough-hewn and refined, The Harper is eclectic yet pleasingly harmonious, with a relaxed and ever-so-slightly irreverent vibe we hope you’ll find refreshing. It’s a recipe for recharging the batteries that may just make this North Norfolk hideaway one of the best coastal hotels in the UK.
