The Woolverton Inn
Stockton
6 Woolverton Road
(609-397-0802, woolvertoninn.com)
Number of Rooms: 13
Guests at the Woolverton Inn might wake up to find themselves staring at a couple of sheep just outside the window of their cottage suite. Or, if they are staying in main house, they may take in the sweeping view of rolling fields or the Delaware River in the distance, all while luxuriating in a two-person whirlpool. Just a few miles up the road from the bustling river town of Lambertville, the Woolverton brings to mind a remote country manor in the British Cotswolds, albeit it with all the modern amenities.
Former Chicagoan Carolyn McGavin brought her urban and corporate background to the enterprise when she came east in 1999 and purchased the 1792 inn with two partners. When Bob Haas became McGavin’s business partner in 2004, he contributed a solid knowledge of the area, having run a family business in Lambertville for twenty years.
The partners have vastly upgraded the 10-acre property, building two structures that mimic the look of old barns and converting an 1860 carriage house into five cottages that include king-sized beds with feather tops, whirlpools, gas fireplaces, and an upstairs hammock in the rustic, bi-level Sojourn Loft. Most of the eight guest rooms in the three-story stone manor also have gas fireplaces and lavish decorating schemes, like the red brocaded walls and bedding in Amelia’s Suite, or the floor-to-ceiling bookcases framing the bed in Newell’s Library.
The multi-course breakfast might include Grand Marnier French toast or a fruit streusel. In addition to visiting Lambertville’s galleries and restaurants, visitors can bike or hike along the towpath that runs for miles between the Raritan Canal and the Delaware River. Drifting downriver in an inner tube or on a raft is also popular, and rental outfits are located in nearby Frenchtown and Point Pleasant, Pennsylvania. Rates range from $145 for a weeknight in one of the small, queen-bed rooms in the main house to $435 for a weekend night in the two-story loft cottage. Weeknight rates increase to the weekend rate September through November.