Majori Manor Membership
A first-floor landing at night: two round arches, a corridor beyond them, and a door standing open at the far end with warm light coming out of it
Majori Manor

Private Residences

Staying, rather than visiting

A few rooms inside the estate, for the evenings that are not worth ending.

Come in
01

Within the estate

The rooms are in the house.

The residences are inside the estate rather than beside it. They are not accommodation, and the difference is not a matter of standard: a room in a hotel is somewhere you have been put, and a residence at Majori Manor is a part of the house you are already in.

They exist for the simplest reason there is. An evening at the estate has a point at which going home is the least interesting thing left to do, and a member who would rather not drive should not have to.

A white two-storey house at blue hour, its pediment and columns lit and every window warm, standing on a cobbled forecourt among clipped trees

The second building, at the end of the cobbles

The rooms look onto the park.

That is the whole of what they face and the whole of what there is to hear from them, which on an estate in the middle of Jūrmala is the thing worth saying about a window.

A panelled bedroom by lamplight at blue hour: bedside lamps lit either side of a buttoned headboard, a chandelier overhead, and a tall window and glazed doors onto the dark park
02

The room

And then the door shuts.

The main suite, at the end of an evening

Dark wood, and light kept warm and low enough that a room is a room after dark rather than a lit box.

Pictures on the walls, hung as a house hangs them. The register is an English private club rather than a hotel interior: the detail is old, close and quiet, and the pleasure of it is in things that were made rather than specified.

It is a house with a history of its own, and the rooms are meant to read as part of that history rather than as an arrangement laid over it.

03

The house it is in

Made, rather than specified.

Six things that were already here.

  1. A round arch on a carved oak pier, a corridor beyond it and a door standing open at the end, over herringbone parquet

    01 The landing

  2. A glazed timber window set into an interior wall above the stair, its casement standing open

    02 A window in a wall

  3. A white tiled stove standing full height in the corner of a room, its firebox open below a moulded crown

    03 The stove

  4. Tall glazed double doors standing open between two rooms, their glazing bars set in a pattern above

    04 Doors that are also windows

  5. A carved marble chimneypiece under a mirror, between panelled walls, on a chequered marble floor

    05 The chimneypiece

  6. A chequered black and white marble floor seen from above, beside the glazed timber enclosure of the stair

    06 The floor of the hall

The same bedroom in early morning light: the lamps unlit, the curtains drawn back, long shapes of daylight lying across the parquet and the park visible through the glass
04

The morning

And then it is simply morning.

The same room, eight hours later

The part nobody plans for is the part that decides it.

An evening is why you did not drive. A morning is why you would do it again — a room with the light coming into it, and nowhere in particular to be for an hour.

The park is awake a good deal earlier than the house.

A window bay in a panelled room: two tall windows over a fitted timber seat, sconces lit either side, and the bare trees of the park beyond the glass
05

The park

The park, just outside.

A window on the ground floor

A window here is not a view. It is the next room.

Two and a half hectares of private park, with the manor at one end of it and the courts behind the hedge. None of it is arranged to be looked at from a window. It is simply what is there, and the window happens to be on it.

Which is the difference between an address and a location.

The manor house seen from the mown lawn, a great tree standing over its portico
The house, from the lawn
The columned portico of the manor with the tree beside it and the grass in front
And the walk back to it
A dark stair hall lit only by three wall sconces, the carved balustrade turning above and a lamp burning in a room through an open door
06

The quiet

Some places are visited. Others, you belong to.

A fire burning in a carved stone chimneypiece in a panelled room, a grand piano beside it and two armchairs drawn up to a chess table
07

The evening

The evening does not end at the door.

Downstairs, later

The advantage of staying is that nothing has to be timed.

A conversation that would have ended at the car ends when it ends. A fire that would have been left is sat in front of.

The last hour of an evening at Majori Manor is the one normally given up to the drive home, and a residence is simply the decision not to give it up.

08

Where you stay

Three ways to be in the same estate.

  1. A panelled bedroom under a chandelier, its bedside lamps lit and the tall windows dark

    01

    The main suite

    In the house itself.

  2. The lit ground floor of a white house at blue hour, its door open under a columned portico above a cobbled forecourt

    02

    The guest suites

    In the second building, across the cobbles.

  3. Two timber cottages among trees at night, their windows warm and a lit path running between them

    03

    The cottages

    In the trees.

09

The house around it

Nobody checks in.

Arriving at a house is not the same transaction as arriving at a hotel, and the estate has no intention of making it one. What that comes to in practice is a conversation rather than a counter.

And the rest of the house is downstairs. The rooms, the table, the fire and the park are not amenities of the residence — the residence is a room inside the building they are already in.

A panelled dining room under a candle chandelier, its tables laid and a mirrored overmantel at the far end
The table, downstairs
A panelled desk in a dark hall under a brass lamp, with flowers standing on it
And the hall you came through
10

The estate

The rest of the private world.

Private Residences

Stay within the estate.

The estate has not opened. A residence here is arranged in conversation, and every enquiry is read by a person.

Enquire about residences Apply for membership