17-02-2025
I've lived in the Cotswolds for more than 50 years – this is how it has changed
Tennis, played on the narrow road alongside my childhood home in a certain Cotswolds village, was a favoured activity of mine as a 12-year-old in the early 1980s. Occasionally my opponent and I would have to step aside from the 'court' for a passing Talbot Sunbeam, usually once every set or so.
Last autumn, I was gardening at that childhood home. Gloss-white Range Rovers, bulbous Audi Q8s and more drove by, on average, every 30 seconds. They had to squeeze past the long line of cars that park on that same road most days from around 6am to late evening.
How has this happened? The village was broadcast as a lovely place to visit post-millennium. Then came Soho Farmhouse, 10 miles away, and high-end estate agents deemed it a pretty place to live. Now the tiny settlement makes the Britain's 48 poshest villages list. Welcome to Whichford in Warwickshire, within the Cotswolds National Landscape.
In the days before my rosé-tinted wine glass, the local garage sold field-going Shoguns to farmers, and stone barns were filled with straw bales, plus delightfully feral country kids. Now billboards around the demolished garage quote 'Coming soon… the destination for the world's greatest classic and performance cars' with pictures of a tangerine-orange Lamborghini and other supercars.
There are no more stone barns, except as 'luxury' (wording of the particulars, not mine) property conversions, and there's an ever-reducing amount of farmland, hundreds of acres re-landscaped behind gentrified electric gates, where the humble farmstead has been demolished, replaced by the latest country pile. The highlight of every off-market discreet property agent's polished sales pitch is the proximity to Soho Farmhouse and Daylesford, which take precedence over local schools. Tourism's mass-exclusivity has created massive change to the residential makeup of the north Cotswolds.
The number of famous faces sojourning or calling the north Cotswolds 'home' has exploded in the years since Soho Farmhouse opened. That's not to say that the Cotswolds were celebrity-free before 2015. The historic Chipping Norton Recording Studios, nearby, holds an extraordinary back catalogue of A-list musicians, who recorded in the residential soundbox from the 1970s to the 1990s. A blue plaque marks the spot, on New Street.
Few knew that, in 1981, Duran Duran were in town to record their debut album. Famous songs such as Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street, and the Bay City Rollers' Bye Bye Baby were also laid to vinyl in these hallowed walls, alongside music by Status Quo, Jim Diamond, Radiohead, Fairground Attraction and the Proclaimers. But the musicians laid low and there was no TikTok to broadcast that they were there.
While Cotswold residents in some tourist hotspots struggle to reach their houses for jostling visitors, it's not all negative. Jeremy Clarkson's pub, the Farmer's Dog, near Burford has created steady employment. The Red Lion at Long Compton (Cotswold Life pub of the year and Slow Travel Cotswolds Awards best pub 2024), which was only pulling pints in the 1980s without accommodation, celebrated 20 years under the same management last year; no mean feat for any pub, boosted as manager Lisa Phipps explains, 'by the shift in the way tourists are exploring the region'.
Other leisure providers can vouch for the importance of tourism to the area's economy. When, as a child, I visited Cotswold Farm Park (one of the first such visitor attractions in Britain), it was tiny. Adam Henson's Cotswold Farm Park, as it is known today, is now one of the region's largest and most popular family attractions, with a restaurant, glamping and big seasonal events.
I would never have believed, when I trekked to nearby Stourton and Cherington for the weekly Brownies meeting as a young girl in the 1970s, that a gin distillery – Cotswolds Distillery – could contemplate opening to become a busy visitor attraction. There wouldn't have been enough visitors. The village school, and the Brownie group, closed in the 1980s.
In Broadway, the Taee family has owned Abbots Grange since the 1990s. Located 25 yards from the desirable High Street, the hidden five-star monastic manor house welcomes guests from across the world. 'Post Covid, the bounceback of the hospitality industry has been tremendous in the region,' says owner Richard Taee. 'So many people and businesses have taken the opportunity to relocate to the Cotswolds; the diversity is creating new consumer groups, enabling the growing business profile of the area to prosper.'
That's the case with the Taees's other Cotswold hospitality business, Huffkins, run by sons Joshua and Jacob. The business operates nine high street tearooms and, in 2021, was able to expand with a new craft bakery in Witney. 'The post-Covid resurgence has seen huge commercial growth, and the area has been able to buck the trend of dilapidated high streets. The affluent local population, boosted by tourism, makes for a winning recipe,' says Josh.
What of the future? Well, on the Great Tew Estate, the home of Soho Farmhouse, permission was granted last year for the Mullin Motor Museum alongside 28 multi-million-pound holiday lodges.
Cotswold hospitality businesses and high streets are, mostly, doing well. Yet, mass exclusivity is endangering the distinctive character that tourists and would-be residents seem to crave. Achieving balance will be key to its future. But as Topsy Taee, owner of Abbots Grange, says: 'Take to the fields and footpaths for a walk and you'll find the landscape enchanting and timeless.'
