Rokeby Manor

Captain G.N. Cauthy built Rokeby in 1840 on a two acre patch of Landour, above St Paul's Church and the old cantonment parade ground that is now Char Dukan. The name comes from Sir Walter Scott's book-length poem about battles near Rokeby Castle in England. Lt. Col. Reilly later took possession and in 1878 mortgaged Rokeby and his other Mussoorie house, Ralston, for Rs. 25,000 to Frederick 'Pahari' Wilson, the Garhwal timber trader who was Kipling's model for The Man Who Would Be King.

In 1891 Wilson's son Henry sold Rokeby to Rev. J.S. Woodside, a founder of Woodstock School. By 1930 it belonged to the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which made it a boarding house for missionary women studying Urdu and Hindi at the Landour Language School and ran it as a guest house for the rest of the century. The Mars Group manages it now.

The restoration kept the brick arches, stone walls, wooden floors, ceiling beams and fireplaces. Rooms are Manor doubles and singles plus the Rhododendron, Rose and Highland suites, looking over the tea garden or the Doon Valley. The restaurant, Emily's, is named for the writer Emily Eden, and Landour Bakehouse uses recipes going back to the late 1890s. Outside are open-air jacuzzis and The Highlands, a pine-ringed terrace at 7,550 feet.