In 2011 the British media christened a group of political and media power players that lived and socialised in the area the “Chipping Norton Set” – these included then Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha, newspaper executive Rebekah Brooks, Elisabeth Murdoch (daughter of Rupert) and Jeremy Clarkson.
In 2015, things got starrier when Soho Farmhouse, the rural outpost of the exclusive members’ club, opened up down the road. The arrival of the country-club-come-luxury holiday camp was a turning point, says Sykes. “It just brought a whole load of people to the Cotswolds who were monied and who were not country people. It brought celebrities.” That included stars like Brad Pitt, Harry Styles, Margot Robbie and Meghan Markle – who had her hen party there.
A year after it opened, David and Victoria Beckham bought a Grade II listed farmhouse nearby, and demand for properties in the area soared. The pandemic intensified the rush to the country. “All those people who previously had just done weekends came out and lived there,” says Sykes. “And they refashioned the Cotswolds to suit themselves, with all the pleasures and all the social intensity of London.”
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Indeed, a spate of new luxury openings means Soho Farmhouse feels slightly old news now. Estelle Manor, a country outpost of a Mayfair private members’ club, has become the new hotspot for up-from-Londoners. There’s also The Bull at Burford, a hotel-come-pub-come-sushi restaurant from PR guru Matthew Freud; and new opening from The Pig, a British chain of upmarket boutique hotels. Daylesford – the upmarket organic farm shop that opened in 2002 and has since grown into a Cotswold empire – launched an exclusive member’s-only wellness club last year.
Country living
The Cotswolds may suddenly feel like the place to be, but in fact, it has been a magnet for fashionable and cultural figures for nearly 200 years. The area became wealthy in the Middle Ages thanks to the woollen and weaving industries, and many of its grandest buildings can be traced back to that time. But when those industries declined, it fell into poverty. “It became a complete backwater,” says Jane Bingham, author of The Cotswolds: A Cultural History. “There was basically no building and no development for 200 years. It was poverty and industrial decline that made it the beautiful sort of wilderness that it was, until the 19th Century when it got rediscovered.”
