Chartwell Castle provides a storybook setting for extraordinary events. What was once a private estate is now a restaurant and garden built around one idea: that a meal, like a good story, should be worth remembering.
From intimate gatherings to grand celebrations, every detail — the light through the trees, the table setting, the plate in front of you — is designed to create magical experiences your guests will never forget.
We built Once Upon A Time around atmosphere as much as appetite. Long tables under fairy-lit trees. A kitchen that moves easily from a Sunday castle breakfast to a wood-fired dinner. A garden that turns an ordinary Tuesday into an occasion. It is hospitality treated as a craft, in surrounds built to match.
A historic castle with enchanting gardens.
A menu built for gathering and celebration.
Impeccable service, every visit.
Garden views, fresh air, timeless charm.
Manicured gardens, stone courtyards and candlelit corners give every visit its own character — whether you are here for high tea, a long lunch, or a wedding under the towers.
Discover the Garden
The castle’s round tower was first raised in 1947 by a Java-born architect of Dutch and Polish descent, on ground the Boer War armies had once marched through. What began as a homestead called Wild Olives was bought unseen at auction in 1986 and spent the next twenty-five years being built out, stone by stone, into the castle that stands today — its 17-metre tower resting not on a dug foundation, but on a pit of packed rock, and still without a single crack.
The estate passed into public hands in 2007, and its dining tradition continues today under Once Upon A Time. The grounds are also home to the largest uninterrupted hedgerow maze in the Southern Hemisphere, planted with over 1,400 trees.
The first tower, raised on the banks of the Klein Jukskei.
Walls half a metre thick, without a single crack.
Planted to form the Southern Hemisphere’s largest hedgerow maze.
Of restoration, before the castle opened its doors to guests.