Old Inn on the Green

The Hotel

Old Inn on the Green sits on the village green of New Marlborough, a small colonial-era settlement in the southern Berkshires, 25 minutes' drive south of Lenox and 30 minutes' drive west of the Massachusetts-Connecticut border. The property has operated as a tavern-and-inn continuously since 1760, making the building one of the longest unbroken hospitality operations in colonial-era New England, with a documented timeline that runs back to the year before the Stamp Act. The current ownership of chef-and-owner Peter Platt and his wife Meredith Kennard acquired the property in 2003, restored the original colonial-era architectural fabric across an 18-month restoration, and reopened the property as a 11-key Relais & Châteaux luxury inn that same year.

The 11 keys are spread across the original 1760 colonial-era tavern building plus the restored 19th-century Thayer House annex (a small Victorian residence the property acquired in 2008 to expand inventory). Categories run from entry-tier Tavern Rooms (22 sqm in the original 1760 building, with restored period architectural details and the original 1760-era exposed-beam ceilings preserved) through Premium Rooms (28 sqm in the Thayer House) to the named Old Inn Suite (50 sqm, the largest unit, top-floor of the original building with a private fireplace). The interior register is the Platt-Kennard-curated colonial-period restraint applied to the heritage envelope, restored period furniture pieces sourced through New England auction houses, hand-painted period-pattern wallpapers, and the deliberate decision to preserve every original 1760-era architectural detail.

What structurally distinguishes Old Inn on the Green is the dining proposition. The Old Inn Restaurant, the original 1760 tavern's dining room, restored to its original colonial-era specification, runs the no-electricity-in-the-dining-room policy that the property has held since the 2003 reopening. Dinners are served by candlelight only, with an original 1760-era hearth fire as the only secondary light source. Chef Peter Platt (a Berkshires-Hudson-Valley kitchen veteran with a thirty-year contemporary-American tasting register) runs an 8-course tasting menu that books three weeks ahead for any high-season weekend; the kitchen sources from the surrounding Berkshires-Hudson-Valley working-farm inventory and the property's own 1-acre kitchen garden. The wine cellar runs about 250 bottles focused on European-vintage Bordeaux and Burgundy.

The structural reason Old Inn on the Green is the considered single-property Berkshires anniversary or solo stay is the smallest-Relais-property scale combined with the candlelit-dining heritage register. The 11-key footprint makes Old Inn the smallest Relais & Châteaux property in the United States by guest count; the village-green New Marlborough setting (the property faces the 1760-era village common, which holds the original First Congregational Church across the green) gives the trip a colonial-era heritage register that the larger Lenox alternatives cannot match. For an anniversary or honeymoon that wants the smallest-luxury-property scale and the candlelit colonial-tavern dining experience, a solo writer's retreat that values the historic-tavern register, or a Berkshires multi-night stay that pairs Old Inn (southern Berkshires) with Wheatleigh or Blantyre (Lenox) for a two-property arc, Old Inn on the Green is the most-considered choice.

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