Langtoft Manor

Langtoft Manor is a stone and brick house on Ballagyr Lane, sitting above its own terraced gardens on the farmland edge of Peel. Lyn runs it as a bed and breakfast.

The drive curves up past dry-stone retaining walls and deep planted banks. Stone steps climb between the flowerbeds, foxgloves and geraniums and pots crowded onto every ledge, to a pair of dark gothic-arched doors with a white iron chair set out beside them.

The sitting room and its stone walls

The sitting room is the best of the house. Bare stone, a beamed ceiling, a stove in the corner and leather and fabric sofas drawn round a low glass table on a patterned rug. A bay window with stained-glass upper panes looks into the trees. Breakfast is cooked and plated, bacon and eggs and beans and mushrooms, and eaten at a wooden table by a window with flowers on it.

Rooms up under the roof

The bedrooms vary a lot. One has a carved wooden four-poster hung with cream drapes; others sit up in the roof with skylights, sloped ceilings and blue or grey accents, and several look straight out over pasture and hills. Rooms are made up as a double, and as a triple with a double and a single that takes the garden view. Each has a private bathroom, one with a bath, another with a walk-in shower and a window over the planting.

The gardens on the slope

The gardens are properly worked rather than tidy: banked beds, gravel paths, shrubs and flowers layered up the hillside, and a planted alley running to the door.

Ballagyr Lane and the run into Peel

The lane sits back among fields, so what you hear is farm and weather. Peel is along the road, with the castle on St Patrick’s Isle, the working harbour, and Fenella Beach under the headland.

Best for walkers

Walkers and families who would rather wake to fields than traffic and still be near the west coast.