Keeping fit and healthy the natural outdoorsy way has never been more popular among Britain's A-listers. Among such stars embracing this lifestyle are movie hardman Jason Statham and his supermodel fiancée Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.
The couple, who recently purchased a 20-acre plot for their 'forever home' on the South Coast - which happens to sit next to a nudist beach - have also built a forest yoga retreat on the site. The new yoga studio - which sits on the edge of a wild swimming lake they also had installed - has been designed in cedar wood with gabion rock walls, in keeping with the brutalist architecture style of the £25 million property. Ensuring the local bat population is unaffected by the couple's presence, the yoga studio also houses a very large bat box.
The retreat was designed by Statham's architect Ben Pencreath, who is a favourite of the Royal family. He previously helped King Charles design the experimental village of Poundbury in Dorset and also redesigned the Middleton family's Chelsea flat. As well as the yoga studio, Mr. Pencreath designed a 'lap pool' just for swimming lengths for Statham and Rosie on the plot, along with a gym and riding stables.
A summer house and a boathouse are also under construction near the property's 1,200-foot-long private beach, meaning Statham can jet out into the English Channel on whatever launch he chooses to keep there. Yet Statham and Rosie are not the only A-listers to have such extravagant amenities added to their homes by the architect.
A source at Statham's new-build beach house told the Daily Mail that Mr. Pencreath had worked with acclaimed Scottish DJ Calvin Harris, installing a hot yoga studio beside a manmade lake on his Cotswolds estate. The source said: 'Ben did something very similar for the DJ Calvin Harris at his new estate in the Cotswolds last year - a hot yoga studio in the woods near to a very large wild swimming lake they also had put in. Anyone who is anyone has a wild swimming lake and yoga retreat nowadays.' For Calvin, Mr. Pencreath also installed two swimming pools, two basketball courts, a gym and an organic vegetable garden.
Aside from Statham, Rosie and the Harris family, other UK-based celebrities also have similar set-ups. The Beckhams also have a wild swimming lake at their Cotswolds estate and a lakeside safari tent where they host BBQ parties. Simon Cowell has a wild swimming lake at his new Cotswolds home nearby, as do Ellen DeGeneres and Portia De Rossi. Meanwhile, the estate Jay-Z and Beyonce are scheduled to buy in the same Cotswolds region also has a wild swimming lake planned.
News of the yoga retreat comes as the Daily Mail revealed last Sunday how Statham and Rosie - perhaps unknowingly - purchased the beach site next to a naturist beach, ready for the extraordinary house which is currently half-finished. Land Registry records show that Statham, who has amassed a fortune of £90 million, paid £20 million for the waterside site which contained a gatehouse, the under-construction modernist home and a separate outhouse in January 2024. Finishing the build itself is expected to cost a further £5 million.
The sprawling single-level U-shaped building is designed around a strict three-dimensional grid and has a square central courtyard with a lap pool enclosing the fourth side. Although contemporary in design, the house is built of traditional materials such as clay brick, cedar shingle, lead and oak. Rosie, who has famously modelled for Burberry, Victoria's Secret and Marks & Spencer and is herself worth £30 million, spoke recently of moving to a more rural life.
She told Australian Vogue that she was preparing for a major shift: a move to the English countryside near the New Forest, where horses, she said, are re-entering the frame. She said: 'There's an incredible dressage school around the corner. I've been dreaming of this since I left home. It will be mud and kids climbing trees. London at the weekends can feel very destination-driven. I want peace.'
The pull of the countryside is natural for Rosie. She grew up in rural Devon, a life which she described in Vogue as 'rustic, outdoorsy, wild, simple', adding: 'Home was a cottage on a couple of hectares with animals everywhere.' She said: 'There was tack being cleaned in the back kitchen, usually some animals – a bird Mum was trying to bring back to life. Mum has dogs everywhere and muddy boots, and it's perfect for them. The house is completely untidy. They live a bucolic life – very bohemian.'
'We lived within our means; we had enough,' she added, 'Mucking out the horse every day, school uniforms ironed by me. It instilled self-sufficiency.' She said she tries to instil a similar sense of gratitude in her own children today. 'It's a fine balance; they're still little,' she said, adding that her mother used to tell her: 'Life's not going to hand you things on a silver platter.'
