Enjoyment To Scale

Small luxury hotel brings European feel to Joburg suburbs

- Bruce Dennill

The gate to the Fairlawns Boutique Hotel & Spa is on the curve of a suburban road in Wendywood, near Sandton. The narrow entrance gives little clue as to the extent of the property behind it, or to its opulence.

The first hint is the size of the parking lot on your right as you go in, which seems to bely the implications of the word ‘boutique’. And the additions and renovations that have taken place over the years now mean the hotel, once more or less a beautifully upgraded house, is now something closer to an elegant Italian hamlet, the Palladian facades of its buildings connected by lovely landscaped gardens.