Cedar Hollow Dorset
The Woodsman’s Treehouse
The one that started it all — and still the one people travel furthest for. Two guests, one ancient oak, and a rooftop you will not want to come down from.
Reached by a boardwalk and a rope bridge, the Woodsman’s is built around a single ancient oak. Everything turns on that tree: the circular plan, the revolving wood burner at its centre, the spiral of the roof deck above.
- Sleeps
- 2 adults
- Bed
- One king-sized bed
- Bathroom
- En-suite flushing loo, roll-top copper bath, open-air tree shower
- Outside
- Rooftop sauna, ceramic hot tub, wood-fired pizza oven, fire pit, hammock, slide
- Built
- 2016, with Brownlie Ernst and Marks
- From
- £495 a night, two nights minimum
Around one oak
The plan is a circle because the tree is. A central round room holds the bed, the kitchen and the copper bath in one space, with a revolving wood burner in the middle that you can turn to face wherever you happen to be sitting. There is no corridor and no wasted corner — just the room, the tree through it, and glass where the walls would otherwise be.
You arrive across a pier-like boardwalk and a rope bridge, which is the point at which most guests stop talking. An entrance hall takes coats and boots so the mud stays outside. Beyond it, the oak.
The roof deck
A spiral stair climbs to a deck in the canopy with a sauna at one end and a ceramic hot tub at the other. In the late afternoon the sun comes through the leaves at exactly the right angle; after dark there is nothing above you but oak and sky.
Down at ground level there is an open-air shower strapped to a tree trunk, a hammock slung on the lower deck, and — because the building needed a second means of escape and Guy Mallinson saw no reason for it to be a ladder — a slide to the woodland floor.
Take the first run holding the edges. How fast you go depends entirely on what you are wearing and how damp the morning has been.
Inside
- King-sized bed with dual-control electric blanket
- Revolving cast-iron wood burner
- Roll-top copper bath
- En-suite flushing loo and heated towel rail
- Fully equipped kitchen with appliances
- Nespresso machine
- Mains water, drinkable, and on-demand hot water
- Mains electricity with USB sockets by the bed
- Dyson hair dryer
- Cooling fan for warm nights
- Blackout shutters, curtain and pulley flap
- Books, games and no wifi
Outside
- Rooftop sauna
- Rooftop ceramic hot tub
- Open-air tree shower
- Wood-fired pizza oven
- Fire pit and barbecue
- Hammock on the lower deck
- Slide to the woodland floor
- Upper and lower decks facing the sunset
- Logs, kindling and firelighters supplied
- 4G signal throughout
The treehouse in pictures
Recognition
The Woodsman’s opened in 2016 and took a RIBA South West award, including Small Project of the Year. It has since appeared on Grand Designs: House of the Year, George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces, and in April 2026 on The World’s Most Secret Hotels.
It is also, according to most of the national travel press, the reason anyone in Britain started thinking seriously about treehouses for grown-ups.
Two adults only, 18 and over. No children and no dogs. Self-catering. Arrival from 4pm, departure by 10am, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Five minutes’ walk downhill from the car park.
Two nights in an oak
Availability opens on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Weeknights are quieter; weekends book furthest ahead.