All products featured on Condé Nast Traveler are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
You never know what might happen when you pass a property with a for-sale sign out front and decide to pop in for a look. That’s what Meredith and Conley Rollins did when they saw that the White Hart Inn in Salisbury, Connecticut, not far from their Litchfield County weekend home, was on the market last November. “It was frozen in time—a real Miss Havisham moment minus the dust and cobwebs,” says Meredith. “The beds were practically ready to sleep in.”
The historic New England inn had been the center of village life in Salisbury since it opened around 1800, but it closed suddenly in 2010, just months after the new owners had completed a $5 million renovation, including a meticulous redesign of the 16 bedrooms. (They pinned a note to the front door before leaving, reportedly citing the “heavy responsibility and time commitment.”) Conley, an investment manager, and Meredith, the editor-in-chief of Redbook,who had loved the inn in a previous incarnation, were giddy at the potential they saw. Their northwestern corner of Connecticut, home to boarding schools and centuries-old hamlets, was crying out for a gathering place—for visiting parents, New York weekenders, and, perhaps most important to the Rollinses, locals.
What started out as a weekend fancy soon became a reality after the couple found eight other like-minded investors to acquire the White Hart as a group endeavor (listed on the deed as Deer Friends, LLC). The first to sign on was Annie Wayte, former chef of the well-heeled shoppers’ lunch spot Nicole’s on London’s New Bond Street and a weekend renter in the area. Others soon followed, including Megan Wilson, art director of Vintage and Anchor Books at Penguin Random House, who created the inn’s new visual identity, and author Malcolm Gladwell, who came on board mainly, he says, so that he would have a place to hang out near his home in New York’s Columbia County. And that’s exactly what Conley Rollins believes will happen. “We want the inn to feel like a public living room again,” he says, adding that he thinks the White Hart’s latest incarnation, which opened on Labor Day Weekend, will update the original’s welcoming, if slightly staid, atmosphere.
Aside from the draw of an airy new dining room—where Wayte’s menu is classic American with British touches—the partners are hoping that the yearround talks and events series will bring the local community back after the inn’s dormant period. The programming, chosen in part by Gladwell, will draw on the wealth of talent in the area. Along with antiques and farmland, creative types may be Litchfield County’s most plentiful resource: Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Stephen Sondheim all live or work in the area.
The “literary evenings,” as Gladwell calls them, will be held in the Tap Room, the inn’s original tavern, which the owners have left untouched, right down to the leafy Arts and Crafts wallpaper. “We would be run out of town if we changed anything too much,” says general manager Daniel Winkley. The menu is reliably pubby: Scotch eggs, a duck shepherd’s pie, and a daily toast special, which Wayte serves topped with whatever local ingredients inspire her—on one recent night, it was a box of homegrown tomatoes dropped off by a new friend from the village.
The final phase of the project is a country store and cafe in the former dining room, where Wayte will sell savory tarts and salads to go. As of yet, Salisbury’s residents are largely reserving judgment, but it’s not from a lack of excitement. It is precisely because the White Hart is so beloved that its re-opening is both a dream project for the new owners and a challenge—to meet, and exceed, more than two centuries of watchful expectation from the community (15 Under Mountain Rd.; 860-435-0030; whitehartinn.com; doubles from $200).
IN THE AREA
Where to shop and what to do near Salisbury.
A general store with traditional but stylish goods curated by Megan Wilson (408 Sharon-Goshen Tpke., West Cornwall; 347-271-0578).
Ellsworth Hill Orchard and Berry Farm
Pick your own blueberries in summer and apples in fall (461 Cornwall Bridge Rd., Sharon; 860-364-0025).
The tasting room of the family-run New England company (1 Railroad Plaza, Millerton; 518-789-2121).
Ian Ingersoll Shaker Furniture
Elegant ladder-back chairs handcrafted from local cherrywood (422 Sharon-Goshen Tpke., West Cornwall; 800-237-4926).